


the point of no return

by LizMikaelson, saltziepark



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Emotional Slowburn, F/F, Fake Dating, Porn With Plot, and by we i mean alex, and maybe kind of get jealous when everyone looks at your not girlfriend girlfriend?, and muna, henelope awesomeness was the working title thanks to liz, is it fake dating if you kiss for real?, maybe there’s a plot, that translates to slowburn but they're fucking, we listened to a lot of lykke li while writing this, we will get there eventually, we're pretending they're all over eighteen because consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24372760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizMikaelson/pseuds/LizMikaelson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltziepark/pseuds/saltziepark
Summary: Because with everyone else, Hope gives and gives and gives, but with Penelope, Hope takes and takes and takes and there’s something poetic about that, Penelope thinks.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson & Penelope Park, Hope Mikaelson/Penelope Park, Jade & Lizzie Saltzman
Comments: 212
Kudos: 449





	1. Chapter 1

The moment that Hope throws Penelope up against the wall next to her bedroom door, fingers fumbling with the zipper on the side of her skirt, is the moment that Penelope should have put an end to it. 

But Hope’s sure hands, always ready with a spell, make quick work of the fabric and Hope drops to her knees before Penelope, grabbing her ass, sliding down her panties and pulling her closer to her mouth and Penelope exhales a loud moan, unable to do anything else but lose herself in Hope Mikaelson. 

Because with everyone else, Hope gives and gives and gives, but with Penelope, Hope takes and takes and takes and there’s something poetic about that, Penelope thinks. It’s the last coherent thought she has before Hope sticks her tongue inside of her and she sees stars.

It’s been that way from the start, ever since Hope stormed into her room after Miss Mystic Falls, demanding answers on what she’d told Landon, and why. 

She’d stolen the bottle of champagne Penelope had been drowning her sorrows in and stayed until Penelope had told her about the burn book, about the secrets, and the lies. 

(Not about the Merge. That’s one secret that Penelope will keep.)

Instead, they’d emptied the bottle and traded easier secrets. 

She’d woken up the next morning with Hope sprawled across the bed, next to her. 

It had marked the beginning of something like friendship. 

“What’s she doing here?” Josie had bitten out when Penelope shows up to fight Triad with them, and she’d almost been ready to leave when Hope’s hand had reached for her wrist, stopping her. 

“She’s helping us,” she’d said, her voice calm and firm. Commanding. 

Penelope had driven with Hope to the pit.

Hope had saved Landon, and Penelope had saved Hope. 

Had stopped her from jumping and closed the pit efficiently, tossing in a drop of Hope’s blood and a screaming Clarke. 

They’d levitated Landon’s corpse, back to the car, and Hope had driven them home. 

“It’s not like I care,” Penelope had said, her feet up against the dashboard, looking utterly nonchalant, “but you should probably talk to someone about the fact that your answer to everything is sacrificing yourself.”

Hope had shifted under Penelope’s knowing gaze, piercing through her soul. “And I didn’t know your parents, but they probably didn’t want you to die,” she’d added, before looking out the window. “If we stop for coffee, do you think people will notice that we have a dead guy in the backseat?”

Hope had looked in the rearview mirror at his sprawled form and something like pity had formed in her chest because this wasn’t how love was supposed to feel, not when a touch from Penelope’s hands earlier had ignited a firestorm within her body that she was having the most difficult time ignoring. 

“Do you think we could get away with throwing some sunglasses on him?” Hope said, biting her lip before turning back to the road. 

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t spontaneously combust while we’re inside,” Penelope had reasoned, pulling off her sunglasses to place them delicately on Landon’s face. 

Hope hadn’t looked back at him as she closed the car door. She hadn’t been able to quite name the emotions swirling inside of her and emotional intelligence had never, ever been her strong suit. 

It hadn’t been until they were back at the school hours later, Raf watching over a still-dead Landon safe in his room, that Hope had knocked on Penelope’s door. She’d heard a soft, “come in,” so she’d pushed open the door. 

Penelope had been perched on her windowsill, the smell of weed wafting about the room mixed with something else - lavender, Hope thinks - and her look, cautious but also tinged with something like longing had made Hope exhale the words that had been in her mind since that morning. 

“I have to break up with him.” 

“Do you want a hit?” had been Penelope’s reply, as if the revelation was nothing more than a declaration about the weather. 

Hope had sunk down on the other end of the window sill, accepting the joint. It had been stained with the color of Penelope’s lipstick, a deep dark red, and when Hope had wrapped her lips around it, it almost feels like stealing a kiss.

She exhaled slowly, out the window and looked out across the campus. It was dark and her fingers were tingling, which could be weed but could also be her need to run, free her wolf for a while, or worse it could be her proximity to Penelope, which would explain the butterflies in her stomach and the way being around Penelope now made her feel like flying and falling at the same time. 

“Do you think he’ll cry?” Penelope had interrupted her train of thought, stealing the joint back. Her fingers had touched Hope’s and it had sent shivers down her spine. “I bet he’s going to cry.”

“Penelope,” Hope had chided, definitely not grinning. “I am not betting with you on how my breakup will go.”

“That’s a shame,” Penelope had sighed, exhaling slowly. Her lips had formed the shape of an o, pretty and circular, as smoke slides from them, and Hope should have looked away. She didn’t. “I’d win.”

“No betting,” Hope had declared. 

“You’re boring,” Penelope had accused her, “but fine. You can come over afterward and I’ll watch a shitty movie with you and assure you that you’ve always been way too hot for that idiot, anyway.”

Hope had tried not to think about the fact that Penelope had just called her hot. She’d probably meant it in a friendly sort of way. Friends could call each other hot. She thinks so, at least. The exact parameters of friendship still felt a little foreign to her. 

She’d broken up with Landon an hour later, and she’d been totally high while doing it. It was not her proudest moment, but at least it was over with. He’d cried. 

“I did like him,” she’d confessed later, back in Penelope’s room, in her bed, feeling lighter and heavier all at once. “I didn’t want to hurt him.”

Penelope had shrugged, wrapping an arm around Hope’s shoulder. Neither of them were touchy people, but they’d both been too high to care. “Sometimes, you can’t fix everything. And he’s fine,” she’d added, consulting her phone, “I sent M.G. to check on him.”

For all of her walls and her bravado, Penelope takes care of people. In her own way, of course, and Hope wonders fleetingly what it would be like to be taken care of by Penelope Park. 

* * *

Josie stops using the pen Penelope handed out at Christmas, and the burn book remains devoid of her curvy, tilted script. Hope, on the other hand, seems to delight in using it all the time. 

When she should be checking up on the school’s happenings, Penelope finds herself immersed in a sarcastic commentary on their teachers, biting snipes about their classmates and sketches. Sketches of the woods, of the school, of Penelope. 

(She looks different in them.)

 _Get me out of here before we don’t have a history teacher anymore,_ appears on the pages one day, and Penelope makes her way to the ground floor. She doesn’t really _get_ it until she pushes the door open, reads the words: “Klaus Mikaelson - The Great Evil” on the chalkboard. 

The new asshole history professor, Vardemus, is more than displeased, but as Penelope points out candidly, no one can influence the monsters’ timing and they’d all be dead without Hope. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” is the first thing Hope says, and Penelope rolls her eyes. 

“Do I look like your therapist, Mikaleson? What do you want to do?”

“Can we get out of here?” 

Penelope takes her to the roof because the Old Mill was too “played out” in Penelope’s words. She pulls a joint from behind her ear that Hope hadn’t noticed and snaps her fingers, lighting the tip and letting the paper burn off before she takes a long inhale. 

Passing it to Hope, Penelope takes her shirt off over her head, revealing a lace bra under her blouse as she sits on the ground, leaning back on her elbows and closing her eyes in the gentle sun. 

Hope watches her, knowing she should look away and she nearly forgets about the joint between her fingers. 

“Either take a hit or give it back,” Penelope remarks, eyes still closed. 

“How did you-?” Hope asks, but she inhales deeply, exhaling everything (or nearly everything) that happened this afternoon in one breath, dropping to the ground next to Penelope, their shoulders touching. 

“I’ve always been defined by things,” Hope begins and Penelope waits for her to continue, raising an eyebrow when Hope stays silent for more than a minute. She’s choosing her words carefully, making sense of them before she speaks. 

“My parents, their histories, the weight of who I am, what I am on my shoulders and sometimes…” 

“Sometimes you don’t want to be Hope Mikaelson,” Penelope finishes for her, taking the joint and flicking the ash off the end of it before taking a drag. 

“Come on,” Penelope says two hours later, “let’s go.” And Hope is still high, still thinking of Penelope in her bra and skirt as Penelope pulls her hand down the stairs and through the hallways, out the back door toward the woods. 

“I texted the boys and figured we needed to unwind. Well, we pregamed but still, you need a night off. No heroics for tonight.” 

“You know I don’t do parties,” Hope reminds her, even as she follows Penelope into the woods. 

Penelope turns back around to her, tugging a little more firmly on Hope’s hand. “I know Hope Mikaelson doesn’t. This is your chance to be someone else, for tonight.”

“I suppose I can make one exception,” she grants, as if she’d ever considered another option, and Penelope laughs. 

The clearing in the woods is abound with chatter, lights and magic, quiet music and laughter drifting out from between the trees. 

And it’s surprisingly easy, in the mess of people and music, to let go and forget the world, with Penelope by her side. 

She drinks a bit too much and Penelope steals the red plastic cup from her fingers, downing what was left of whatever punch that Jed and the wolves had made. Hope scowls at her but Penelope only smirks. 

She’s a constant presence by Hope’s side all night, a hand to her lower back and Penelope whispers in her ear and she feels a shudder of pleasure go through her each time Penelope’s lips brush against her ear lobe. 

She dances and she can’t remember the last time she allowed herself to let go. Allowed herself to feel nothing but the sliver of skin exposed when Penelope’s shirt rides up, the press of Penelope’s body against her and the fast beat of the music around them. 

Josie's nowhere to be found and Hope almost prefers that, because there’s something about dancing with Penelope, being lost in her orbit, that feels like an intrusion into a life that Hope shouldn’t be living, even if it feels so damn right. 

Hope ends up in her lap, immersed in some debate about wolf things with Jed, and Penelope watches her, her hands on Hope’s waist as she jabs a finger at Jed’s chest, telling him that she’s the alpha, she always has been. It’s her birthright. And as she moves to take her shirt off over her head to show him the crescent wolf mark, Penelope springs to her feet, saying “easy, tiger,” as her hands still on the hem of Hope’s shirt. 

Jed roars with laughter, the bark escaping his voice and Hope just steals his bottle of beer and downs it, sitting back down in Penelope’s lap with an arm around her neck. 

“You good?” Penelope asks quietly, and Hope thinks she’s too sober for this, hasn’t seen Penelope drink all night except to stop her from finishing her drinks and Hope narrows her eyes at her. 

“Are you even having fun?” Hope asks her, her hands running through Penelope’s hair, and she’s really far too close for this to still be a good idea. 

“Yes,” Penelope promises her, looking up at her with a smile, which is definitely true, because this easier, lighter version of Hope Mikaelson is absolutely intoxicating and Penelope wants to kiss the smile off of Hope’s lips. 

Hope shakes her head, doubtful, before sliding out of Penelope’s lap and holding out a hand towards her. “I’m not convinced. You should dance with me.”

Penelope laughs as Hope twirls her around. “Who are you and what have you done with Hope Mikaelson?”

“She’s not here tonight!” Hope replies, pulling Penelope closer to her. “Please direct any and all inquiries regarding monsters or magic to whats-his-face.”

* * *

It’s the middle of the night by the time the party empties, the last stragglers tracking back to the school. Hope knows that the alcohol in her veins is almost gone, but there’s still the rush of Penelope, right next to her, that’s making the night seem brighter.

Hope follows Penelope back to her own room, and she looks beautiful, glimmers of moonlight catching in her hair, and the night air feels heavy, charged with tension, and Hope throws caution to the wind and pulls Penelope closer and kisses her. 

They had been laughing on the walk back, draped around each other and Hope had been shushing Penelope, telling her how loud they were being, her fingers on Penelope’s mouth before she swallows the mirth and traces the soft skin, pausing at the plateau of Penelope’s top lip, breathing deeply. 

“Make me forget,” she whispers against Penelope’s mouth and it drips from her lips like honey. Penelope wants to bottle the desire in Hope’s eyes, even if she is just a means to an end because if Hope Mikaelson kept on looking at her like that, she would move heaven and hell for her with the flick of her wrist.

And so she kisses Hope back, lets Hope push her against the wall of the bedroom and sink to her knees. There are a thousand reasons why this is a horrible idea and Penelope could not name a single one. 

She feels her leg pulled up and over Hope’s back and she balances on one foot, sinking into the feeling of Hope’s warm mouth on her and her touch is electric, sparking along Penelope’s skin as her nails scratch up and down Penelope’s thigh before she swipes a finger through Penelope’s center. 

“My god, Mikaelson,” Penelope breathes, a hand to the back of Hope’s head. 

“You’re soaked,” Hope says, the desire unveiled in her voice as she feels Penelope under her fingers. 

“What are you going to do about that, then?” Penelope challenges, her next words getting lost into a breathless moan as Hope slides two fingers inside of her. 

Hope fucks like she fights and her pace is relentless, her fingers inside of Penelope and her tongue pressed against her clit, and Penelope grinds into Hope as she comes, her leg shaking from holding herself up, but Hope is there to keep her steady even as Penelope feels the rushing wave of pleasure course through her body.

Hope rises to her feet, her hands on Penelope’s waist, grounding, steady, and Penelope shoves her backward toward the bed, shedding her clothes as she goes, her lips finding Hope’s and tasting herself as they fall into each other on the mattress, skin to skin and not close enough as Penelope kisses her, her hand moving down Hope’s stomach before she pauses, fingers dancing on Hope’s pubic bone. 

“Can I?” she asks quietly, pulling back from Hope to study her face, eyes moving from Hope’s lips to her eyes for a sign that this was okay. Hope answers the question with a kiss and a growl before Penelope moves her hand slower, her middle and ring finger pushing inside of Hope. 

The tribrid moans loudly into Penelope’s mouth and she bites Penelope’s lip at the feeling, ghosting her lips over Penelope’s cheek and toward her ear, nipping at the lobe. 

“Harder, Park,” she moans again, wrapping a leg around Penelope’s back and Penelope could get used to this, Hope’s nails scratching down her back as she breathes warm air into Penelope’s ear. She might have just come but she feels herself growing soaked again, needs to lick and bite and taste every inch of Hope she can get her hands on. 

So she does just that, her lips trailing a line down Hope’s chest and across her sternum, down her stomach and hips, clamping onto Hope’s clit as she pulls her towards her mouth. 

Hope should have known that Penelope would be exceptional at this, that she would build Hope up to a high that she had never felt before, carrying her over the edge as she licked and bit and sucked, fingers moving in and out of her in an obscene way that she was too far gone to care about. She comes with a moan, grabbing at Penelope’s hair to slow her down, but the witch continues to fuck her slowly, her tongue swirling around her clit to push Hope towards a second orgasm. 

Collapsing on the bed, Penelope joins her shortly after, her chest heaving and mouth slick with Hope all over her. Hope takes another opportunity to kiss her, to see if the desire that she felt has been spent, and once her lips meet Penelope’s and she tastes herself on them, she’s lost again, pulling Penelope closer to her and intertwining their legs together. 

“I shouldn’t have doubted your stamina,” Penelope sighs against Hope’s lips, as the tribrid leans her forehead against Penelope’s, her hands finding their way to Penelope’s hips. 

“Shut up,” Hope says simply, running the back of her hand from Penelope’s hips to her core, reaching out a finger just to see - 

“You’re still so wet.” 

“Yes, and?” Penelope retorts, but the rest of whatever she was going to say is lost as Hope spreads Penelope’s legs with her hand, a finger plunging inside of her. She laughs instead, capturing Hope’s lips in a kiss as Hope climbs on top of her. 

Hope wakes a few hours later, the sun too, too bright for her hangover. She spots a dark looking potion on her bedside table and her mouth tastes like cotton and Penelope and whatever was in that punch. Grabbing the glass, a note seems to have been stuck underneath it, which Hope squints at, her head pounding and how much did she have to drink? She lost count after the fifth shot of tequila with Jed. 

“Thanks for the orgasm -x” is written in swirling cursive and Hope just tosses the note to the ground, the familiar smell of Penelope’s perfume wafting from the note, from her pillow, from her skin as she sighs into her bed. 

For the first time in years, months, or an eternity, she feels at peace. 

And maybe, if it had ended there, if they had gone back to bitchy banter and nothing more, it would have been fine, but it doesn’t. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Because it’s almost deceptively easy, going back to normal, to pretend they haven’t spent a night together that Hope can’t stop thinking about. Until Penelope shows up to class in the tiniest crop top and the shortest skirt Hope's ever seen. And perhaps she would be able to resist temptation, but when Penelope catches Hope, rather shamelessly, checking her out, she winks and smirks and Hope throws all caution to the wind. 

She drags Penelope to the nearest broom closet as soon as class is over, palming at the exposed skin even as Penelope chuckles against her lips. 

“Is this you being possessive, Mikaelson?” she laughs as Hope kisses down her neck. 

“Do you not own any clothes?” Hope questions. 

“I think-” Penelope’s breath hitches as Hope sucks on her pulse point, “the exact amount of clothing I am wearing is working out quite well for me.”

There’s laughter and the sounds of students passing by and Hope covers Penelope’s mouth with her own. “Be quiet,” she hisses, before pulling away to take in their surroundings, focusing on a rather rickety table in front of them.

“Turn around,” she says. Penelope eyes her for a moment, watching Hope’s chest rise and fall and glancing between her dilated pupils before she turns her back on Hope, who wastes no time pulling Penelope’s skirt up, forcing the brunette to bend at the waist as she shoves Penelope’s thong out of the way to plunge two fingers inside of her. 

Penelope curses sharply, as Hope fucks her, her mouth on Penelope’s neck, her free hand sliding down over her stomach before moving lower to circle her clit. 

“Quiet,” Hope reminds her, watches as Penelope tugs her own bottom lip between her teeth, obviously doing her best not to let them get caught. And that doesn’t really mean Hope wants to stop eliciting these delicious, quiet whimpers from Penelope as she curls her fingers, thrusting with fast movements. 

“It’s cute that you think you’re in charge,” Penelope breathes, but the moan that escapes her lips speaks volumes and Hope takes the hand that was on Penelope’s clit to clamp over her mouth. The witch nearly bites Hope, but instead sucks the fingers into her mouth to lick herself off of them. 

“I’m not the one bent over,” Hope says in her ear, feeling how close Penelope is. “And you seemed to like when I was in charge a few nights ago.” 

It’s all that she will say about that night because she can’t bring herself to think about the implications of all of this because it's messy, so messy and the sex is just sex, right? As long as that’s all it is, it’s going to be fine, and they won’t go up in flames and burn the school down. 

The bell rings outside before Penelope has a chance to reply and Hope tugs on her earlobe with her teeth as she curls her fingers. “Come on, then,” she mutters and feels Penelope shatter around her as the witch mumbles “you’re an ass,” broken by yet another moan as she comes. 

Penelope takes a moment to steady herself, adjusting her skirt, wiping off her smudged lipstick, and fixing her hair. Hope kisses her then and she immediately regrets it because it’s too sweet for what they have just done and she lingers a moment too long, savoring Penelope with a sigh. 

(In another world, she thinks, she could kiss Penelope forever, lose herself in cherry lip gloss and tangle her hands in dark hair.) 

She flees from the closet, before Penelope can say anything and Penelope waits a bit, knowing she will be written up for her tardiness, but not caring in the slightest as she touches a hand to her lips again.

* * *

So, they don’t stop. 

Instead, Penelope finds herself sleeping over in Hope’s room more often than not, although sleeping is usually the last thing on her mind when she opens the door to find Hope waiting for her. Instead, she pulls Hope into her arms, and they fall onto the bed together, clothes landing on the ground. 

The back of the library, in the section on magical history that no one seems to ever wander into, becomes their second favorite meeting spot. Penelope joins Hope there one afternoon and the tribrid wastes no time pulling and tearing at Penelope’s sweater and blouse, intent on getting Penelope as naked as possible as quickly as she can. 

“Patience, wolf,” Penelope says slowly, pulling the sweater over the top of her head and guiding Hope’s hands to the buttons of her blouse. “I know you’re practically made of money, but I like this blouse.”

Hope says nothing, pulling Penelope in for a searing kiss that has Penelope gasping for air when they pull apart. 

“Do you want to -?” Penelope begins but Hope just replies “no,” with such simplicity and a hint of anger that Penelope decides not to probe, losing herself in the feeling of Hope’s lips against her, soft, belying the harshness of her tone. 

Hope’s hands hurry in popping every single button as she presses Penelope against the nearest bookshelf, commenting, “I love it when you wear skirts,” as she plunges her hand in Penelope’s panties. 

“I’m well aware,” Penelope breathes out, trailing her mouth over Hope’s neck, biting as she rides Hope’s hand. 

“You’re so gorgeous like this,” Hope whispers, repeats it again, later, when her hands are tangled in Penelope’s hair, and she’s pulling her closer as Penelope’s tongue draws patterns over her clit. 

By the time they end up on the roof, it’s almost sunset. Penelope doesn’t press whatever happened, just smokes her joint as Hope stretches out across her lap, Penelope’s fingers sifting through her hair, almost absent-mindedly. 

“Jed and Raf asked me to go running with the pack, during the next full moon,” she confesses. 

Penelope exhales. “And your immediate reaction to human emotion was to run away and fuck me up against a shelf.”

Hope rolls her eyes at her. “Are you complaining?”

“Did I say I was? Anyway, let them be nice. And if you feel like joining them, do that. And if you don’t, come over and do me instead.”

Hope snorts with laughter before reaching up to steal the joint from Penelope’s lips. 

* * *

A week later, Penelope walks past Landon and M.G. on their way to the dining hall and sees Landon holding some kind of pink milkshake between his hands as if he were carrying the crown jewels. 

She stops M.G. with a hand on his arm. “What’s he up to?”

“He’s trying to woo Hope and win her back.”

“And he brought a milkshake?”

M.G. shrugs. “It’s symbolic.” A symbolic fucking milkshake. How lovely.

Penelope drags him with her. “I have to watch this.” 

She’s not worried. It’s not like she cares if Hope wants to end their _thing,_ but she doubts it will happen over this pathetic attempt. Not when she can still taste Hope on her lips from the quickie they had this morning in the bathroom. 

And Landon failing should be hilarious to watch. 

They find Landon, stumbling and stuttering, holding out the milkshake to Hope, who looks something between annoyed and confused. 

But she takes it from him just the same because he looks so earnest and heartbroken that a bit of Hope breaks under his gaze.

She looks across the room, and green eyes meet blue, with Hope mouthing “help” at Penelope over Landon’s shoulder. 

Penelope sees it in her face as Hope smiles at Landon and before the witch knows what she is doing, she marches over to the pair, pulling Hope into a kiss that takes Hope’s breath away. 

Penelope’s lips are soft and smooth, which Hope knew, but she moves them over Hope’s as if she’s done this thousands of times before, so sure of herself and Hope can’t help but kiss her back, her head momentarily blank. 

“Hi,” Penelope smiles, eyes dancing over Hope’s face.

Landon looks at them, chin quivering before he waves at Hope a bit lamely and stalks off, head in his hands. 

Penelope just smirks at Hope, taking the milkshake from her hands to take a sip, passing it back quickly with a groan, “ugh, who makes a raspberry milkshake? Take it back.” 

“It was an inside thing we had,” Hope replies, still studying the milkshake in her hand as if it was a foreign object. 

“Boring. I would have preferred peanut butter. Well, toodles!” Penelope smirks, joining M.G. whose mouth was open, nearly dragging on the floor at the scene. 

“You’re drooling, Milton.”

* * *

“The whole school thinks we’re dating,” Hope greets, slamming the door to Penelope’s room open hours later, “after your little stunt. Josie just gave me something resembling her blessing.”

For a moment, emotion flickers over Penelope’s face before she schools her features. “Did it, or did it not, get the immortal rooster off your back?”

“It did,” Hope sighs, “and it got everyone else on my back.”

Penelope raises her hands in faux-apology sitting up on her bed, her back to her headboard. “You asked for help.”

“Well, that “help” ended in being cornered by Josie. Who is - and I’m quoting, ´very surprised but happy for us as long as we’re happy.´”

“That’s not too bad,” Penelope offers.

“She looked like I killed her puppy, Penelope.”

“You could have told her we’re not dating,” Penelope offers. “Josie’s smarter than everyone thinks she is, which you know.”

“One of the witches saw us leaving the library last week,” and alright, maybe they’d been a bit too caught up in each other to notice anything else that day, but Penelope must have taken out stock in a skirt company because that seemed to be all she was wearing these days. “And I didn’t think telling her that we’re just fucking would make her feel any better.” 

Penelope sighs, stretching out on the bed, choosing her words. “So let’s pretend to date. A week, maybe two. It will keep Landon off of your back, we can stage a breakup, everything goes back to normal and you can sweep birdboy off of his feet and return to your compulsory heterosexual life.”

“My life isn’t - you do know that - I don’t even know if I want - whatever,” Hope finishes, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“How do you want to proceed, Mikaelson?” Penelope props herself up on her elbows, bored of the conversation but wanting to keep Hope in her room as long as she could. 

“What do you get out of it?” Hope asks, tilting her head to the side to watch the witch. 

“I was happy with just the meaningless sex,” and something within Hope shatters at the word _meaningless_ but she tries not to let it bother her as Penelope continues, “but consider this my one good deed of the year.” 

Hope scrutinizes her for several seconds, and Penelope feels - almost- like the hidden parts of her soul are being unraveled, feels her mask of ever-present boredom slipping, fears that Hope might see her less selfless reasons for agreeing to this before the tribrid suddenly nods. “Fine. How much worse can it get?”

“Wow, you really do know how to sweep a girl off her feet,” Penelope says dryly, smirking before clearing her throat. “Anyway, how do we do this?”


	3. Chapter 3

They negotiate for over an hour, passing the bottle of red Penelope has stashed under her bed - “for emergencies, this constitutes one-” between them.

“You have to go to parties with me,” Penelope says, “or no one will ever believe us.”

“I don’t do parties.”

Penelope rolls her eyes. “It’s not optional if you want even a chance in hell of us pulling this off. You can do me while you do parties, if that sweetens the offer.” 

Hope gulps down about half the bottle of wine before finally agreeing. 

They trade facts about their life between sips of wine, and somehow, Hope thinks, the fact that Penelope seems to enjoy this just as little as she does makes it easier. 

There’s also the fact that she sees no pity in Penelope’s eyes, not once, not when she talks about being possessed, not when she talks about kidnapping her mother, not when she talks about her father’s death. 

Penelope seems to understand her, in a quiet way that doesn’t beg for more or ask for any embellishments. Whatever Hope wants to share, she does. And whatever she doesn’t, Penelope doesn’t pry. 

Hope learns that Penelope comes from a long line of witches, learns that she’s afraid spiders but not snakes, that she misses the west coast, that her first kiss was a boy named Luke, learns she lost her virginity in the backseat of a car at a drive-up movie theater to a girl named Hannah. 

“What about hand-holding and PDA?” Hope asks, laying flat on her back as Penelope lights up another joint as she lays on her stomach, holding her head up with her free hand. 

“I just shoved my tongue down your throat in the middle of the hallway. Was that demonstrative enough for you?” Penelope laughs loudly, smiling as she remembers the kiss. 

“So yes to that?” 

“When I date someone, Mikaelson, I like people to know it. Not in a “you’re mine” kind of way, which seems archaic and treats you like chattel, but more in a way that suggests “I’m yours.” Does that sound amenable?” 

Hope can almost feel her brain derailing for several seconds as after Penelope says _I’m yours,_ before the other witch clears her throat and Hope nods jaggedly. “Amenable, yes, that sounds amenable.”

Penelope falls silent and Hope is lost in thoughts herself before the joint appears above her head, held aloft with Penelope’s lithe fingers. She snatches out of the air, taking a long drag and holding it in before exhaling to the ceiling. Penelope waves a lazy hand and the wisp turns into a cat jumping through the air. 

“Dates?” Penelope questions as the cat races up the walls. 

“Landon and I used to go to the Mystic Grill,” Hope offers and Penelope rolls her eyes. 

“Okay, we can do better than that. You’re dating _me,_ not that mud pigeon.”

“ _Fake dating_ you, Penelope,” Hope reminds her because it would be all too easy to get caught up in all of this and they need boundaries. Especially since her willpower feels dangerously tenuous, especially where Penelope is concerned. 

“Whatever. Can we prohibit him from dating?” A second cat, made out of smoke, joins the first one and Hope nearly forgets what they are talking about and wonders whether they can go raid the kitchens. 

“I’ll pick you up Friday. Wear - well, wear whatever you like - you look gorgeous all the time in a stupidly, effortless way, which is annoying.”

“You think I’m gorgeous,” Hope laughs and the cats chase each other midair as she grins cheekily at Penelope. 

“You’re high,” Penelope levels back, but the smile on her face reveals more than any of her words ever could as she looks at Hope. “Do you want to sleep over?” 

“I am your girlfriend,” Hope declares before dissolving into giggles, and yeah, she’s definitely high. She should also probably get _better_ at being high if she’s going to keep smoking with Penelope.

* * *

They walk to breakfast the next morning and Hope pauses once they cross the threshold to grab Penelope’s hand, to which the witch responds by bringing their joined hands up to her lips for a kiss and Hope’s stomach really shouldn’t swoop like that, but it was totally just her being hungry. 

It was definitely not the way that Penelope’s eyes were sparkling with something that looked like happiness but also had to be competitiveness because Landon was facing them, the bite of his cereal forgotten as he spots the pair. 

“Are you actually dating?” The question slips out of him five minutes into breakfast, his spoon having fallen to the ground at least five times. 

“Definitely,” Penelope purrs, in a voice that definitely sends shivers racing down Hope’s spine. They can probably maybe certainly skip their first period. 

Which they do, stumbling back to Hope’s room tangled in each other because Penelope wouldn’t stop smirking at Landon as she whispered in Hope’s ear during breakfast. 

Now she’s smirking as she slides two fingers into Hope, her tongue circling her clit and Hope throws up a silencing charm around her room as she grips her headboard with one hand and Penelope’s head with the other, nearly breaking the wood off as Penelope curls her fingers inside of her. 

Hope curses under her breath and Penelope speeds up, pulling Hope more fully into her mouth, palming a breast underneath Hope’s bra that she never bothered taking off because this was supposed to be fast but now Penelope just wants to make Hope come undone again and again. 

She does. Twice. 

But not before Hope tries to push her hips upward into Penelope’s mouth, to which Penelope responds by pushing Hope back down again with a chuckle against her thigh, the warm air doing things to Hope’s sensitive core and Penelope’s tongue moving in ways she didn’t think was possible. 

They barely make it in time to second period, which they thankfully do not have together. Or Hope might never focus again. Even so, she spends most of class thinking about Penelope’s hands on her, the way she sets Hope on fire with every single touch.

There are other things she can’t stop thinking about, too. The way she feels quiet around Penelope, like all the stress and the pain she carries with her just seep away.

The way Penelope’s eyes glitter when the sunlight in them catches just right, the way she seems to reserve a smile just for Hope because her face lights up every time Hope enters the room. 

There’s other things too, as the next days pass. Hope thinks that she needs to write these things down lest she forget them. Like the way Penelope holds open doors for her, or leaves her notes in the morning when she’s run back to her dorm before class. 

Or the way she steals fries off of Hope’s plate during dinner but leaves her pizza crusts because she claims she hates them but knows that they’re Hope’s favorite.

And all of this really means nothing because they’re just fake dating to get Landon off of her back and the sex is great but its just sex between two consenting teenagers who may or may not find each other attractive. 

(Hope thinks about the attractive part late one night when she is in her room alone and gets off twice while she’s thinking about Penelope’s smile.)

* * *

They’re on the stairs, late one afternoon and Penelope has her head thrown back laughing at something that Hope has said and the tribrid can’t help but watch the mirth on Penelope’s face and thinks about how she wants to pepper kisses down the column of her throat when Landon joins them, mumbling something about the weekend and her plans. 

Hope’s eyes move quickly from him to Penelope, watching the laughter die on her face as she sets her jaw and narrows her eyes. He leaves shortly after because Hope said she was busy and might paint, but never mentions her upcoming date, which was the whole point behind this and Penelope remains silent for a moment before getting to her feet, smoothing down her skirt and adjusting her blazer before she holds her hand out to Hope. 

They’re barely inside the door to Penelope’s room before she’s on Hope, pinning her against the wall, her hands raised above her head. Penelope slots a knee between Hope’s legs and Hope grinds against it as they kiss. 

It’s different this time, than any other time. 

She’s kissing Hope with an intensity and determination that Hope hasn’t seen, her hands working frantically at Hope’s cardigan and top, her nails leaving marks that will fade in time but burn in the best way possible. 

She pushes Hope back towards her bed, running a hand through her hair as they shed their clothing and Hope wants to ask Penelope what’s wrong, but the fire in Penelope’s eyes is doing _something_ to Hope and she lets herself be flipped over, landing on the bed on her stomach. Penelope pulls Hope’s hips towards her, her chest against Hope’s back as she kisses down her shoulder blades. 

“Penelope, I -” Hope begins, but Penelope’s pulling her to a kneeling position, reaching around her hips to run a finger across her clit and Hope’s words die in her mouth as she moans at the touch. Hope rocks her hips against Penelope’s thighs and she feels a finger push into her from behind, followed by another one and she spreads her legs wider on the comforter. Penelope kisses down her neck, biting at her pulse point as she moves her fingers in and out. 

She feels like she’s free-falling, the whole world reduced to nothing but Penelope’s fingers between her legs and her mouth on Hope’s neck.

“Turn around,” Penelope says breathlessly, and Hope does so, spinning in Penelope’s arms. Green eyes meet hers and Penelope’s pupils are blown, desire and something else lurking beneath the emerald irises as Penelope moves in for a kiss, all teeth and tongue as Hope lays back down on the comforter with Penelope falling on top of her. 

“I want to see you,” Penelope explains cryptically, kissing Hope as her fingers once again push inside of her, accentuating each word with a thrust. “I want to watch you come.” Her forehead is nearly bent to touch Hope’s, their chest against each other’s, rising and falling and Hope is wonderstruck because of emotions she won’t name, can’t have, are swirling in Penelope’s eyes as they stare at each other.

A moan escapes Hope’s lips as Penelope’s thumb ghosts over her clit and Penelope’s closes to the distance between them to kiss her, her eyes still open, focused on Hope in a way that makes her feel absolutely dizzy.

Her hands slide down Penelope’s back, pulling her closer, pulling them closer together before Hope moves her hand around to Penelope’s hips, her fingers trailing over soft skin as she swipes through Penelope’s center. 

Penelope’s hips raise up slightly, and she straddles Hope’s leg as Hope pushes inside of her. Her eyes close at the feeling, and Hope can hear her heart rate, already elevated, accelerate rapidly. Hope is close, so damn close so she picks up her pace to match Penelope’s and they’re breathing each other’s air. 

Something changes around them, Hope can feel it. She wonders if Penelope can too. 

Hope’s legs fall open even wider, her hips arching to meet every press of Penelope's hand. 

“Keep looking at me,” Penelope breathes. Hope is too far gone to reply, feels herself tightening around Penelope’s fingers as she moves her thumb in a deliberate circle and Hope comes with a cry that Penelope smothers with her own lips as they moan into each other. Hope’s eyes move over Penelope’s face after she rides the wave of pleasure out, but it's indecipherable. 

Penelope’s orgasm comes shortly after, a sound like _Hope_ dripping from her lips and she falls to the bed next to Hope, who brushes her hand over Penelope’s lower lip and they’re swollen and the lipstick is smudged and Hope really wouldn’t have it any other way. 

She thinks Penelope might ask her to leave and maybe it would be smart if she did because this is just sex and what they just did felt a lot like making love. 

Turning to her bedside table, Penelope grabs a joint from her replenished pile and lights it quickly, exhaling with her eyes closed. The room feels almost eerily quiet, and Penelope would rather not dissect what she felt when she saw Landon far too close to Hope.

Because Hope Mikaelson has always been utterly unattainable, keeping her distance from everyone, and Penelope has built her existence here on a complicated nest of secrets and lies, and an errant thought about the fact that Hope is breathtakingly beautiful doesn’t change any of that. 

Hope clears her throat, and Penelope watches her, naked, stretched out, her hair curling around her shoulders, the marks Penelope left on her slowly fading away. 

“We probably missed dinner.”

* * *

They end up raiding the kitchens and it’s easier there, in the dim light, Penelope thinks, watching Hope make macaroni and cheese. She’s digging in the freezer for ice cream because everyone knows that Emma hides the good chocolate chip somewhere in the back. 

Hope turns to smile at her, humming as she places the pan into the oven, and her eyes are bright and sparkling, and Penelope feels the breath hitch in her throat. Just for a second. 

She does the only logical thing, which is tossing a pastry at Hope, who catches it admirably. Wolf instincts, probably. “You’re asking for a fight, Park,” Hope challenges. 

Somewhere, between Hope sticking her tongue out at her and firing back with a handful of cherries - impossible to catch and so not Penelope’s fault and chasing her around the kitchen, Penelope’s worries slip away.

Love could never be this easy. 

Because Hope reaching a finger in the jar of flour to swipe a line down Penelope’s nose shouldn’t make her feel like she’s just run a marathon. 

And she really shouldn’t corner Hope up against the kitchen counter as they wait for the macaroni and cheese to finish baking because the way Hope’s mouth opens slightly, daring Penelope to kiss her with a raised eyebrow really shouldn’t make her weak in the knees. 

And if she takes the chance to rub their fake relationship in Landon’s face at every chance she gets during the next week, that’s just because it’s hilarious to watch him stumble and fail, while she gets to feel Hope’s hand on her thigh during meals and gets to leave kisses on Hope’s cheek after she walks her to class. 

(It’s a game, one Penelope aims to win because the ostrich should never get the girl, but somewhere along the way, Penelope thinks it might be turning into something that she could lose spectacularly.)

* * *

Penelope stops by Hope’s room on Friday night and Hope opens the door, but stops in her tracks before she has a chance to say anything because Penelope was gorgeous, objectively so, but Hope feels her stomach stir in a way that is becoming far too commonplace where Penelope is concerned. She’s wearing a black lace camisole matched with tight black jeans and black heeled boots, carrying a leather jacket over her arms and Hope has never been this attracted to lace and leather before, but she feels like she might have to start paying more attention to it now. 

Hope is staring before she drags her eyes back up the length of Penelope’s body to meet her face. 

“You look nice,” she settles on, because anything else would be too much and they hadn’t even left and Hope is already thinking about what could possibly be underneath all that black fabric and lace. She chances a glance back to her bed and then to Penelope as she bites her lip. 

Did they really have to go out in public when they could just - 

“You don’t look so bad yourself, Mikaelson,” the witch smiles, bright red lipstick on her lips that Hope wants to kiss off. She makes it her mission, before the end of the night, to do just that. 

They walk out to the front of the school where a black car waits for them and Penelope, chivalrous as always, opens the passenger door for her before she hops in the driver’s seat. 

“Is this - ?” Hope begins, but Penelope just shakes her head. 

“We don’t need to discuss where I got the car from, Hope,” the witch smirks, tossing her leather jacket in the backseat before she grabs something else to hand to Hope. “Here, before I forget.”

Flowers. A bouquet of fucking flowers and all Landon had ever gotten her was a goddamn milkshake. 

“The woman at the store told me that they mean - well, that doesn’t matter,” Penelope amends quickly, buckling her seatbelt. 

She had almost told Hope that the lilacs meant a new love, the acacias meant a secret love and well, the roses and lilies were self-explanatory. 

Hope looks from the flowers to Penelope and then back to the flowers, her mouth dry because this wasn’t turning out the way she had wanted it to. It was a thousand times better which made the lie, burning in the pit of her stomach like acid, a thousand times worse. 

Penelope pulls up in front of a little hole-in-the-wall sushi place Hope hadn’t known even existed in Mystic Falls. The name makes her scoff because who in the middle of Virginia would ever name a sushi place I’m Soy Into You? 

“You can’t be serious,” she says, making no move to leave the car. 

Penelope unbuckles her seatbelt, sitting with her hands in her lap as she looks at Hope. 

“Well, it's definitely a step up from the Grill because it's a date with _me_ and not with the muddy vulture. And it’s actually really great food, unless sushi isn’t your thing?” 

Hope sees a slight change in Penelope’s demeanor and it finally strikes her that she’s _nervous_ , anxious for Hope’s approval. Hope files that information away later. 

“No, I trust you,” she says simply and before she can make a move, Penelope is up and out of the car, opening her door with a smile. 

Hope gets out slowly, and realizes how close she is to Penelope, the scent of her perfume overwhelming her senses and she really can’t help herself when she leans in for a kiss, grabbing Penelope by the waist and pulling her closer. 

“What was that-?” Penelope says slowly, but Hope just nods over her shoulder at a pair of witches from school, their eyes firmly planted on Hope and Penelope.

Penelope glances over her shoulder and nods, knowing she shouldn’t feel a deep weight in her stomach when she sees the witches. The softness had surprised her because so very few kisses with Hope were soft and definitely shouldn’t make her head feel like she had just downed two glasses of champagne in quick succession. 

A swipe to her lipstick from Hope to make sure that it wasn’t smudged and the tribrid grabs her hand, lacing their fingers together.

They walk into the restaurant and it’s adorably small and decorated with bold splashes of red and black and Hope really shouldn’t have doubted Penelope’s taste because it's perfect and crawling with Salvatore students, which is exactly what they wanted. 

Penelope’s hanging their coats when she’s intercepted by Lizzie Saltzman. 

“Satan,” Lizzie greets her, her eyes traveling through the room. “Here on a date?”

“Yes,” Penelope replies, cautious as she swallows deeply. 

“With Hope?”

Penelope rolls her eyes. “No, with the twelve other people I’m dating on the side. Yes, with Hope.”

“I don’t know what’s happening here, Park, but it smells like a scheme. So, if this is the next part of some plan to somehow break my sister’s heart even more than you already have, I’ll figure it out.”

“Why don’t you focus on your date and step off of mine?” Penelope glances over to a table by the window where a pretty blonde vampire sits, her leather jacket and fishnet tights a surprise for the picky Lizzie Saltzman, but the girl - Jade, Penelope thinks - just waves at them with a shy smile. 

Who knew that Lizzie had a thing for punk rock.

“I’m watching you, Voldemort. If you hurt Hope or my sister with this, I’ll destroy you.”

Penelope rolls her eyes. “You’re not as scary as you’d like to be, Lizzie. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to my date.” 

Lizzie stomps away, her Docs echoing off the floor and she adjusts her suspenders before sitting down with Jade, who places her hand atop Lizzie’s on the table. 

“Lizzie’s kind of onto us,” she informs Hope, quietly, as soon as she’s sat back down. 

“Kind of onto us?” Hope questions, thanking the waitress as water and menus are brought to them. 

“She made some vague allusion to this being a scheme, which is more perceptive than I would ever give her credit for because her head is normally shoved so far up her ass she can see her own throat, but we gotta sell this, Mikaelson.” 

And it's almost too easy, dating Penelope Park. 

Or this version of Penelope Park that Hope never knew existed. 

She’s the type to talk about books and music and her favorite movies. The type to smile, really smile, her eyes shining bright when she recounted the story of the time that she got too high at the Old Mill last year and had to break into her own room by climbing a tree. 

She’s the type to nudge her knee under the table with a grin. The type to steal Hope's ginger with her chopsticks before Hope bats them away with her own. The type who asks if Hope wants dessert even after they have shared five rolls between themselves and Hope knows she’s so full but doesn’t want this night to end. 

So she says yes to mochi ice cream, feels heat in her core when Penelope places a strawberry-flavored one in her mouth and Hope nearly chases her fingers. 

Lizzie is long gone by the time they’ve finished dessert, and Hope hadn’t even noticed, all too immersed in Penelope. 

After Penelope pays, dropping down a metal card that clangs on the wooden tabletop, they walk around the town square and Penelope drapes an arm around Hope’s shoulders, pulling her into her body. It’s nice, Hope thinks, to have someone she can be fully herself with, with no expectations. 

Too bad it’s all a lie. 

“Do you think we should kiss?” Penelope asks as her arm drops to clasp her hands with Hope’s, steering her towards a bench. 

Hope drops to her side, eyes moving surreptitiously around the square as couples enjoy the warm spring night. “You never know where Lizzie Saltzman could be lurking,” Penelope jokes with her eyebrows wiggling. 

“Just say you want to kiss me, Park,” Hope teases, and tries to ignore how much she means it. 

“I’m just being helpful,” Penelope replies with a grin, pulling Hope closer. One of Hope’s hands moves to Penelope’s neck, right under her jaw to feel her pulse, to know how this is affecting her. Penelope’s heartbeat is fast, too fast, but her mask is still firmly in place, which shouldn't bother Hope as much as it does because she's seen Penelope undone before but she wants to see it again and again. 

Hope's eyes flutter closed and their lips come together, slowly, tentatively, exploring and memorizing. And Hope smiles into the kiss, opening her mouth as her tongue slips into Penelope’s mouth and she tastes rose mochi and bad decisions. Hope tugs on Penelope’s bottom lip with her teeth and pulls Penelope closer, the witch’s hands fastening on her waist before moving up under her shirt. 

The kiss ebbs and flows and Hope really doesn’t want to be the first to pull away, doesn’t know how much time has passed when they finally break apart, both of their pupils blown. Hope takes a moment to survey her work. 

Penelope’s hair is sufficiently tousled and her lips are a lighter shade of red, so she feels a smug appreciation as her heart rate returns to normal. Penelope looks dazed, has yet to utter a word but clears her throat and murmurs, “That was -” but her voice is rough and Hope straightens her blouse and nods. She can’t talk about the feelings swirling in her eyes, in Penelope’s eyes, so she cuts her off before she can get any further.

“Yeah, uh, we should go. I don’t think anyone will doubt us now.” 

They walk to the car, not touching each other and Penelope automatically opens Hope’s door before moving to the driver’s side. The drive back to the school is quiet, but charged, and Hope sees Penelope chewing her bottom lip in thought as she drives, the arrogance and bravado she always wore stripped down to a sixteen-year-old girl in all black lost in her own thoughts. 

Hope would like to know Penelope’s thoughts, ask and ask and ask, but everything between them is based on an understanding of distance. This isn’t real, she reminds herself, no matter how much it feels that way, sometimes. 

“I know you have training early tomorrow, so I’ll leave you here,” Penelope finally says when they’re back at school, eyes downcast and looking anywhere but at Hope. She steps in and Hope feels her breath hitch, nearly drops the bouquet because Penelope hadn’t looked at her once since the kiss in the square and it feels like there is a chasm forming between them with every moment that passes. 

Penelope’s very demeanor has changed from minutes ago and before Hope can begin to unpack whatever the hell was going on, warm lips brush her cheek and Penelope whispers, “goodnight, Hope,” before disappearing down the hallway, throwing her leather jacket on and over her shoulders. 

Hope notes that she’s walking in the opposite direction of her room, towards the roof, but can’t, won’t bring herself to chase after her. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

The next two days pass with a quieter Penelope by her side. Especially for the first day, Hope almost feels like they’re only going through the motions, and it leaves her with a hollow emptiness she hadn’t anticipated. 

She’s gotten used to Penelope’s presence, to her witty commentary, and her hands tracing over Hope’s body but they haven’t had sex since the Landon incident, haven’t kissed since the town square and Hope didn’t think she would be confronted with a gnawing in her chest that made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. 

It’s almost like Penelope is there but just out of reach, like a dream that you lose right after you wake up even when you try to drag the threads of the memory to the surface. She kisses Hope on the cheek as she walks her to class, but it’s brief and it lacks the warmth behind it that it once had. Her smiles don’t quite reach her eyes and Hope feels foolish for even recognizing the crinkle at the corner of her eyes when Penelope is genuinely happy about something, but now that she has, she can’t just forget it. 

The bouquet on her desk is in full bloom and she remembers that Penelope had spoken of the meaning of flowers, and she makes her way to the library. She grabs a book, its cover dusty and worn, but when she opens it to the first page, the spine cracks as if it hadn’t ever been opened before. 

Falling into an armchair in the back corner of the library, facing the door because she never knew what could happen in this place when her guard was down, Hope flips through the pages. She’s just reached the acacia, reads the words _secret love_ on the page and inhales sharply when she hears voices at the other end of the room. 

Penelope stands with her back to Hope, leaning on a mahogany table with one arm out, her other fist at her waist looking far too good in a dark plaid skirt and the very same sweater that Hope had nearly ripped to pieces last week. Hope has to lean a bit to see who she’s talking to and her heart sinks because the melodic laughter that she heard flowing out of Penelope’s throat and straight to Hope’s heart was caused by _Josie._

Penelope leans over more fully now, resting on her elbows as she bent at the waist to turn one of the pages of Josie’s open book, her eyes shining with happiness. Happiness that Hope hadn’t seen all week. Josie’s laughter is infectious because it always has been and even now, it bursts forth from her lips and Hope thinks she’s going to be sick. 

She snaps the book shut, because suddenly whatever she might have been reading doesn’t matter at all anymore. It doesn’t matter what acacias mean or that Hope’s can still feel the ghosts of a kiss on her lips from Friday night. It doesn’t matter that Hope’s mind, always active and on alert and overthinking everything, had quieted the moment that Penelope’s lips had touched hers on the bench in the middle of the town square. It doesn’t matter that she had been up all night Friday night, wondering what Penelope had been doing on the roof, aching to talk to her. But they didn’t talk about things like this. Sure, they had talked about their parents and Hope had told her about the expectations placed upon her and stuff like that, but apart from the breakup with Landon, feelings weren’t really something ever mentioned. 

And for good reason. Because this, whatever was boiling in her stomach like acid, wasn’t a feeling that she ever wanted to experience. 

And yet, she couldn’t quite help it, even as she carefully places the book back and hurries out of the library. They don’t see her leaving. She’s got some experience in discretion from all of this chasing monsters around. Despite herself, even if she knows better, she can’t help but look back. 

Josie’s laughing and Penelope’s smiling at her, and Hope wonders, wonders, can’t help but wonder, what it would feel like if Penelope smiled at her like that. 

(Wonders what it would feel like to be loved by Penelope Park.)

She holes herself up in her room and tosses paint at a canvas until her hands are smeared with colors. 

Penelope comes in late in the afternoon, dropping a kiss on Hope’s lips that doesn’t linger before dropping down on her bed to sip out of the to-go coffee cup in her hands. She seems lighter than she has in the past days and Hope can’t help but begrudge it, just a little, because she _knows_ that it must be because of Josie. 

“Where have you been?” she asks casually, as Penelope watches her paint. She has a streak of blue on her cheek and Penelope wishes she could paint landscapes on Hope’s bare back. Or maybe the night’s sky, making constellations out of freckles. 

“Library. Josie and I have a class project,” Penelope replies, sipping on her cappuccino and Hope wishes that she had lied.

But Penelope doesn’t have to lie, because she is absolutely single and they are nothing but friends who fuck and pretend to date and Penelope can spend all her afternoons in the library with Josie, if that’s what she wants. Hope hmms a reply, slashing red across the canvas with nearly a snarl before she glances back at Penelope, who watches her quietly. 

“What?” Hope asks, because she can feel Penelope’s eyes on her from across the room and it burns. 

“Nothing,” Penelope says with a shake of her head, playing with the lid of her cup, tearing the edge of the plastic. 

“Say it,” Hope grits through her teeth, her heart hammering in her chest at the way Penelope was looking at her. 

“You’re moody,” Penelope states. “Is Ric overworking you? Do you want me to tell the monsters to take a walk?”

Hope can’t help the chuckle that escapes her as she rolls her eyes because surely Penelope would assume that she could just fight monsters with sarcasm and cynicism alone. “No,” she answers, “though I would love to see you ordering the monsters around.”

“I would do it,” Penelope declares, all of the confidence in the world behind her words. 

Hope rolls her eyes and goes back to her painting, feeling a little lighter. 

“You've never painted me,” Penelope complains, thirty seconds later, sliding her shirt over her head. 

Hope turns and watches her, carefully, contemplating, for several seconds. “Do you want me to paint you like this?”

Penelope raises an eyebrow. “I’m game if you are, Mikaelson.” Her hand slides down to the zipper of her skirt, tantalizing, and Hope clenches her fingers around the brush in her hand. 

But this isn’t the kind of offer she’s going to walk away from. Because she might never be loved by Penelope, she might never know what it’s like to have her for real, but she has this. She has this moment, Penelope looking up at her with hooded eyes, and no matter how fleeting it might be, she can capture it. 

She places her brush down, waves her hand quickly and the canvas in front of her is replaced with a blank one. “Take your skirt off,” she says, and Penelope adheres with a chuckle, sliding the skirt down her legs before tossing it to the ground. 

Hope takes in the sight of her, lace underwear, full lips, and she has many, many ideas of what they could be doing at a much closer distance. But this is what she has, and she’s going to treasure it. Because Penelope is here with her, in this moment. 

And then, she begins painting. 

Penelope is art, she thinks, a masterpiece of olive skin, dark eyes, curls that radiate the sunlight streaming through Hope’s windows. She’s lightness, freckles on her thighs and shoulders, bold splashes of gold through irises that could very well see into Hope’s soul. 

Hope’s never had the time before, to watch her like this, to take in every inch of mesmerizing skin. 

She watched her last week, her eyes never leaving Penelope’s as they fucked in Penelope’s room and it feels like they’re back there. The air around them is charged and Hope hasn’t even touched Penelope yet, doesn’t know if she can without breaking. 

“Lay down, on your side, facing me,” Hope instructs, spinning in her seat to more fully face Penelope. Penelope doesn’t break eye contact as she does just that, and Hope feels entranced by her gaze. 

“Take your bra off,” she says, and watches as Penelope reaches behind her back, sliding flimsy lace and thin fabric down her arms, and Hope can’t quite help the way she licks her lips as she traces her eyes over Penelope, nearly naked. The witch stays silent, watching Hope work, her expression one of quiet intensity. Hope doesn’t know what she’s thinking, is afraid to ask and break the spell that they’re under. 

She paints, and paints, and doesn’t know how much time passes, but it feels like seconds, and it’s never been easier, her brush gliding over the canvas, attempting to recreate the masterpiece before her. By the time she’s done the room feels like it’s rippling with electricity, and Hope barely takes a second to place her brush in it’s tray before she’s across the room, sinking to her knees in front of the bed. 

“Come here,” she breathes, and Penelope crawls towards her to sit on the edge of the bed and Hope opens her thighs, her hands moving over the very skin she just painted, lips following her hands as she scratches up and down Penelope’s legs, moving towards her center. 

She pulls Penelope into her mouth, and it’s everything they’re not supposed to have, soft and slow, and falling into each other. It’s Penelope’s hand intertwined with her own while Hope uses her other hand to slide two fingers inside of her. It’s the way their eyes keep meeting as Hope licks a line up and down Penelope’s clit. It’s the breathless way Penelope gasps out her name, back arching off of Hope’s bed and maybe, she should have painted Penelope exactly like this. Open and free and absolutely gorgeous. 

And it feels a whole lot like love, like everything Hope should be smart enough to walk away from because Penelope Park still loves Josie Saltzman and could never open up a spot in her heart for Hope Mikaelson. 

She leaves Penelope curled into the sheets, her eyes closed with a lazy smile, and claims that she has to meet Alaric. Penelope pulls her down to kiss her, hands on either side of her face. “Fine,” she mutters into the kiss, “but there’s a party tonight and you better be my date, Mikaelson.”

“Yeah, uh, sure,” Hope agrees as she closes the door, her mind miles away from the conversation, still stuck on the burning on her lips from Penelope’s kiss, still tasting the witch on her tongue, still craving her in all the ways she wasn't allowed to. 

Penelope stands, stretching her arms over her head as she walks over to the hastily arranged mess of canvases on the wall in Hope’s room, flipping through them. A few are of the lake, the school grounds, the Old Mill lit up with fairy lights in the trees. And there are some towards the back, hidden behind others. Penelope pulls one out and sees a pair of eyes looking back at her - just a sketch in charcoal, but she recognizes the eyes as her own. Pulling out another canvas, behind the first, she sees a full sketch of her face, and yet another reveals her side profile. She feels a rush course through her body, not unlike kissing Hope Mikaelson because she doesn’t know what to make of this.

Because three weeks ago Hope was with Landon, her epic love and now Hope is hiding drawings of Penelope. Hope is _drawing_ Penelope, has drawn Penelope a handful of times. She turns and finally sees the painting that Hope had just completed of her. There’s gold all around her body, reflected in rays of light that streak through her hair and her irises. She looks ethereal, like a goddess out of mythology and Hope is reflected in each stroke of paint, each line of Penelope’s body, each wave of her hair. 

Taking a step back with her mouth dry, Penelope grabs her clothing, dressing quickly before taking a seat on Hope’s bed, a shaky hand running through her hair. 

Everything about this feels messier with every passing second, and she can barely process that Hope was here, not even twenty minutes ago, her mouth between Penelope’s legs, whispering her name like a promise. She looks back across the room, staring at the painting. She leaves moments later, slamming the door behind her. She needed a drink. Or twenty. 

* * *

Hope’s late to the party, because once she’d come up with an excuse to talk to Alaric, he hadn’t stopped talking, and the sun was already set by the time she’s walking towards the Old Mill. She had changed into a v-neck top and dark jeans, her heeled booties giving her a few inches of height because surely Penelope was dressed in something spectacular and while Penelope had never given her a dress code, she knew she had to make a little bit of effort to keep this charade up. 

She takes in the usual sights - the vampires are off in the corner sucking down blood packs and looking like they wanted to be anywhere but here. The werewolves are doing keg-stands, cheering loudly and smacking their chests in their usual displays of toxic masculinity and pack hierarchy. Lizzie and Jade were up against a tree, feverishly making out, and Hope couldn’t find it in herself to be mad because good for them.

Hope picks up a clean red cup off of one of the many tables littered with drinks, pouring herself some vodka and mixing it with what appears to be seltzer water, downing it all in one gulp. Pouring herself another cup and not even bothering to add chaser, Hope looks around for the familiar head of brown curls.

But Penelope’s nowhere to be seen and Hope chases down her vodka with two tequila shots, which is probably a stupid choice, but also definitely what she needs to survive tonight. She’s angry, because parties were Penelope’s idea to seal the realness of this fake dating scam, but Penelope clearly can’t even bother showing up. And she knows how much Hope hates parties.

Hope finds a spot near the keg, sitting next to Jed as he grins to make room for her. It’s a far cry from the party that started all of this, when Penelope was glued to her side, her hand on the small of her back a soothing balm after everything with Landon. 

A chant of “Josie! Josie! Josie!” starts up behind Hope and she turns, makes eye contact with Lizzie who disentangles herself from Jade long enough to come up for air before her eyes finally alight upon Josie, who is levitating a pyramid full of red cups, dropping the shots of alcohol into the werewolves’ waiting mouths as they high-five each other. Penelope is by her side and she’s laughing, smoke animals playing in the air near her as Josie sends bolts of lightning into the sky, transforming into fireworks that light up the woods. More cheers erupt from the crowd and as Josie turns to look at Penelope, a smile is on her lips and her eyes are sparkling red and blue.

Time slows as Hope watches Josie place her hand on Penelope’s face, her skin glowing red and her eyes closing in contentment as she grabs Josie’s hips with her hands. 

It’s not - Penelope is allowed to touch Josie in anyway she wants, Hope knows that, but she can’t help the rage that runs through her. There’s something intimate about it, the way Josie’s hands glow red and Penelope just laughs, like she was expecting it to happen. Hope doesn’t quite know how long it lasts, before Josie turns and her hands move back up towards the sky, rays of fire shooting from her hands, but it felt unbearably long. 

When she exhales a shuddering, painful breath and looks around, she finds Lizzie looking at her. Jade’s arms are wrapped around her waist, and her gaze is gentle, apologetic, and something in her breaks at that, the rage and the alcohol and the _jealousy_ spilling over. 

Penelope catches her eye then and she smiles at Hope, the same smile she had just been wearing for Josie and the alcohol in her system turns to acid in her stomach as Penelope comes to her side, reaching out to pull Hope into her and it feels wrong, so wrong. 

“Hi, babe,” Penelope says, and there’s still that smile on her face and the rage inside of Hope curls. 

“That looked cozy,” Hope observes, and she can smell Penelope’s perfume, can still taste her on her lips even though she had taken all of those shots because Penelope is all around her, imprinted on her heart and her soul, and she didn’t want - she doesn’t want to feel this aching feeling anymore. 

“What? What are you-” Penelope asks, brow furrowed as she grabs Hope by the hips to make the tribrid actually look into her eyes instead of anywhere but at her. “Please, look at me, Hope.” 

It’s the please that nearly breaks her because only hours before Penelope had told her, “please don’t stop.” 

Hope’s gaze is angry when Penelope finally gets the chance to look at her, all the gentleness from that afternoon gone, and there’s an iciness around her that Penelope isn’t used to. “I’m going to go,” Hope says, “and you can get back to your little show.”

Hope turns and walks off, toward the school and into the darkness and Penelope groans to herself, downing the cup of whatever the hell she had in her hand and taking off after Hope. She catches up to her quickly, pulling her arm, which has the tribrid whirling towards her, backing Penelope up into a tree with her arm at her throat. 

“Hope, wait-” Penelope gasps, her voice hoarse because that the hell was going on? Hope had gone down on her, bolted out of the door of her own room and now she had taken one look at her and Josie and had stormed off. 

Hope lowers her arm, stepping away from Penelope, careful to put distance between them. “Go back to the party.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be my date?” Penelope questions. 

“I really don’t have the acting skills to pretend to be your girlfriend while your hands are all over someone else,” Hope bites out. 

“Is that what this is about?” Penelope asks. “We’ve been pulling this off fine for almost two weeks, no one will notice if Josie siphons from me at a party.”

“Lizzie noticed.” Hope shrugs, wrapping her jacket tighter around herself. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. I think Landon has moved on, this whole thing has certainly worked out for you, so we can just stop now.”

“Worked out for me?” Penelope questions. 

Hope’s eyes are still stormy with anger. “You could have told me you were using me to make Josie jealous, though. I thought we were friends, Penelope. I didn’t volunteer to be a pawn in your mind games.”

Her last blow strikes and Penelope remains standing, speechless, the words washing over her skin, as Hope turns and runs off.

Making Josie jealous had never been what this was about, it had been about Hope the entire time. And the fact that Hope can’t see that, can’t see how Penelope - that Hope thinks so little of her _hurts_. Far more than she had expected.


	5. Chapter 5

When they originally started sleeping together, Penelope had been a sort of escape. A way for Hope to forget about things and be someone else for a while. Someone who wasn’t destined to kill whomever she loved. Someone who didn’t have to shoulder the burdens of her mother and father’s deaths. Someone who didn’t have to worry about monsters. And then it turned into something else that felt like comfort and balance, an anchor keeping her feet firmly on the ground. A weight off of her shoulders. 

And now, without Penelope, Hope feels like she’s free-falling, and it’s not enjoyable. She spends the rest of the weekend half-asleep, unmoored in the safety of her room. 

She’s sleep-deprived with bags under her eyes, dark circles that don’t seem to vanish no matter how many times she mutters the same spell over and over, pinching at her cheeks.

She’s irrationally angry, snapping at everyone in her classes on Monday and Tuesday and by Wednesday, she stops eating meals in the Dining Hall and just goes back to her room after her classes.

By Thursday, she’s abandoned even those, waiting for the inevitable summons from Alaric saying she would be handed detention or some other draconian punishment if she didn’t leave her room. As if she hadn’t spent most of her life at the school and was acing all of her classes. She was the tribrid, the savior, that had to count for some mental health days whenever she wanted them, thank you very much. 

On Friday, she can hear the party all the way from the Old Mill, slamming the window to her bedroom with a groan as she pulls her comforter over her head and buries herself in her pillows. She grabs and drags her laptop towards her under the covers and drowns herself in yet another episode or twelve of Cutthroat Kitchen.

She tries to ignore the aching in her chest where her heart should be, tries to ignore the smell of Penelope’s perfume and body wash that seemed to be stuck to her sheets and her clothes.

But she’s failing, failing miserably. Because every blink is Penelope, every thought is Penelope, every heart beat and body ache is Penelope. Penelope who doesn’t want her, never had, who only wanted Hope around to make Josie jealous. 

When Alaric does show up on Saturday, he still hasn’t noticed her absence and instead has a monster on his heels. 

“Hope,” he breathes, barreling through her door. She raises her head to acknowledge his arrival before laying back down. “We’ve gotta - wait, are you sick? Can you even get sick? You’ve never been sick before.” 

“Sure, I’m sick, let’s go with that,” Hope replies, eyes firmly on the wall in front of her and not looking at a sweaty and out of breath Alaric. 

“Hope, there’s a succubus on the loose. Dorian thinks she was drawn to all of the teenage hormones. Like some sort of homing beacon,” he pauses, his hands on his knees as he catches his breath, clenching a fist to his side in what Hope was sure was a cramp. “Josie and Penelope ran out ahead of everyone with Kaleb and M.G. on their heels, but we need you.” 

Hope sits up instantly at the mention of Penelope, with “on my way,” slips past her lips as she reaches for her jacket and boots as she hurries out the door, bypassing a only slightly startled Alaric who was still gasping for air. He was getting too old for this. 

She only stops to look down at her outfit for a moment before she magicks a pair of jeans and a tank top underneath the jacket. She couldn’t easily go charging toward a feral succubus in her pajamas. Taking the steps two at a time, she sprints out the front door - the _suspiciously_ wide-open front door, ducking under an erratic spell that was flying at her face before surveying the scene. 

The vice around her heart that had been clenching tighter with each passing day grinds even closer together and Hope has a premonition of jaws clamped around the organ and her lungs, biting through soft flesh as she watches Josie and Penelope. 

This couldn’t be heartbreak, watching the pair fighting together - so in sync and fluid in their movements that it was almost like a dance. No, this couldn’t be heartbreak because her heart had been broken when she had ended things with Landon, hadn’t it? What she had with Penelope was physical, wasn’t it? A way to dull the pain and the expectations that piled on her like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Hope gasps out loud, grabbing her chest because she was in pain, physical pain watching Penelope with Josie, spellbound and beautiful and not hers. Never hers. 

This couldn’t be heartbreak. This was so much more. This was like a bomb going off, shrapnel and sharp pieces flying everywhere. This was an imploding star, the gravitational pull of it all sucking the air from Hope’s lungs as she watches how perfectly Josie and Penelope work together, how they dance around each other and grab each other’s hands when Josie siphons from Penelope.

This is a choreographed love song in slow motion. It’s an epic love story that Hope has no business watching - the girl who was always chosen second and the selfish girl who wanted no one. She could almost cry at the beauty of it. 

(She thinks that this is what being loved by Penelope Park looks like, as her heart breaks into pieces.) 

Hope tears her eyes away because she can’t - her heart - she can’t bear to watch them a moment longer. She was unworthy, so unworthy of Penelope’s affection and attention, she realizes, knowing she took away weeks and moments and experiences from Josie. Stolen time because she needed Penelope closer. Needed her around because she made the world lighter, more bearable, even while Penelope was tailor-made for loving Josie. 

She wonders how life had changed in such a short amount of time. How Penelope Park had come in with no expectations of who she was or who she needed to be and accepted everything about her with a smirk and a smile. She can’t think of her life any other way now. 

M.G. and Kaleb try their best to disarm the succubus but she inhales widely, her arms thrown out and the boys are powerless against her, feeling their own power escape through their throat, giving the succubus even more strength. Her clothes are ragged and black as they hang off of her and she looks like she just crawled out of a crypt...or a mud pit. 

Penelope and Josie are still valiantly fighting, tossing spells and communicating with just looks and glances, and watching them like this leaves a bitter taste in Hope’s mouth. She can’t keep watching this, this beautiful, epic love story unfolding in front of her and all thanks to her. No. Best to get the monster handled, and then she can go back to her room and her bed and her island of solitude. 

Hope marches out to the succubus, her hands spread wide as she yells, “ _Fluctus Impulsa_!” Her anger, the roiling waves of it in her stomach are unleashed upon the monster, and as she maintains the spell, she feels a flicker of dizziness. 

She should have slept more, maybe. Or at all. Probably should have eaten more than the few meals that she had snuck from the kitchen. She hadn’t wanted to linger when she left her room. Penelope had spies everywhere and even being in the halls and the kitchen brought back ridiculous memories of ridiculous times that were imprinted on her memory, on her heart. 

“ _Fluctus Impulsa_!” She repeats, her hands still spread, collecting all her rage and power and blasting the monster to the ground. She watches the woman disappear before the sky turns black and her world slips away.

* * *

Dying was supposed to be more permanent and hurt a hell of a lot less, Hope thinks, as she blinks open her eyes against the bright, too bright light. She raises a hand to block out the sun, burning into her corneas, but even that hurts too much so she mumbles to herself, “Kill it. Kill the sun.” 

“Okay, sleeping beauty, take it easy,” a raspy voice says to her right and Hope sees green eyes that normally shine look dull, rimmed in red. She’s drawn those eyes before, too many times to count. Those eyes haunt her dreams, but never before had they looked so bloodshot, so lost. 

“You need to rest longer. Why you thought you could take on a succubus after not sleeping or eating for four days, you fucking martyr. What were you thinking?” the voice says again. The words are cracked and splintered, the sentence shattering like glass and the voice sounds so broken, but Hope wants to listen to it because her eyes are closing once more, unfocused. Hope feels a blanket pulled up higher on her chest as the room grows darker. Warmth spreads through her hands as she feels soft skin and smells plumeria. The ghost of a kiss lingers on her cheek as Hope feels herself fall away, falling infinitely. 

Her world dissolves into darkness, devoid of color. She stands alone and it feels like Malivore all over again. She takes a step and then another and another, running to the end of the light, but she always returns back to where she’s started. A scream escapes her throat and it burns the way a scream should, but no sound reaches her ears. She takes a breath and feels it catch in her lungs, a thousand thorns probing into soft flesh with each rise and fall of her chest complete and total agony. 

Opening her eyes takes effort and she’s finally able to lift her heavy lids. It’s dark this time and her room is illuminated in the glow of a dim light. Josie sits by her bed, reading a book and gnawing on her thumbnail with her legs kicked up on Hope’s favorite ottoman. Her face changes into a grin when Hope’s eyes find her, and why does Josie look so damn happy to see her? 

Hope has stood in the way of so much with Josie and Penelope. No, no, Josie shouldn’t be happy to see her. No. It’s all wrong. 

“Hey, you,” Josie says, relief in her voice as she’s instantly up, crossing the room in a few quick strides and dropping to Hope’s side on the bed. 

“We’ve all been so worried because you passed out right as the succubus dropped and then Penelope dragged you here. Well, she nearly tried to drag you, but then remembered that she’s a witch and levitated you up the stairs, barking orders the entire time. She’s been a wreck, I finally convinced her to get some sleep a few hours ago.”

Hope sits up in bed and she must have moved too quickly because her vision swirls and she falls back onto the pillows. She catches a whiff of Penelope on them and wants to savor the feeling, the memory of Penelope asleep, a smile on her face as she dreamed. Hope had woken up one morning just a few moments before her, the sunlight framing her face in the most gorgeous way as the dust swirled in the light, like a thousand tiny stars dancing over their heads. That memory seemed so far away now. 

“Good, that’s good. So you’re both - good. You’re safe.” Hope says, her tongue moving around her mouth like a foreign object. 

“Everyone’s safe, because of you. Oh duh, water. Do you want some water? You’ve been asleep for three days so you must be thirsty,” Josie rambles to herself, reaching over to Hope’s bedside table to grab a glass with a comical bendy straw. 

There are fresh flowers on her bedside table, lilacs, acacias, roses, and lilies and Hope hates them. She wants to set them on fire because they’re just like the bouquet that Penelope had gotten for her on their not-quite-a-date-date that had felt so fucking real, so magical. 

Hope drinks the water slowly as she looks at Josie, her eyes narrowed, whispering a thank you. Her head hits the pillows heavily as Josie pulls a phone out of her back pocket, responding to a text with a smile on her face. 

“You can go see her, you know,” Hope says, swallowing back the acid in her throat because she never wanted to say these words ever, if she was being honest with herself, especially not to Josie. 

She doesn’t want to have this talk with Josie, doesn’t want to see anyone. That’s what shutting herself in her room has been all about. It had been a clean break. No collateral damage. She can go back to being the loner tribrid with no family and no friends and Penelope and Josie can go back to - 

“Go see who?” Josie asks as she slips her phone in her pocket again. 

“Penelope. You don’t need to keep watch over me. I’m awake, I’m fine. Your girl-girlfriend is probably waiting.” 

There, she said it. Bandage off (albeit not painlessly) and she could go back to sleeping and watching trashy Netflix shows and Penelope and Josie could go back to being together. Problem solved. 

“My girlfriend?” Josie glares at her. “You mean _your girlfriend. Do_ you actually think that I’d try to date your girlfriend while you were unconscious?”

“It’s not like we were actually dating. I was just a placeholder for you,” Hope mutters, pulling the blanket higher over her, eyes on her ceiling and not on the shocked look on Josie’s face. 

“Not actually dating?” Josie sounds like she’s hearing this for the first time, even though Penelope must have mentioned it to her. “Explain,” she demands, her jaw set and her voice allowing for no arguments. 

“She was just helping me out with getting Landon off my back.”

“So you were - what - fake dating? Because of Landon?”

“Yes,” Hope confirms. 

“A well-placed jinx might have done the trick,” Josie sighs. “But you were actually sleeping together? Or did you fake the orgasms in the library stacks, too?”

“No, those were real, but it meant nothing. It was just - ”

Josie stares for several seconds before she shakes her head. “Just what?” Josie exclaims. “You’re an idiot. You’re both idiots, actually. But fine, you win. You can be stubborn together and see how that works out for you.” Josie mumbles something like “women” under her breath with an eye roll. 

“How am I the idiot?” Hope asks, her anger, so close to the surface the past week, igniting with the spark of Josie’s anger. Josie takes a deep breath, and grabs Hope’s hand, grasping her fingers gently and threading hers with Hope’s. 

“As a casualty of Penelope Park, let me just tell you what you should already know. Penelope never does anything for anyone. You know this. I know this. The entire school knows this. So what you thought was her doing something to help you, to get Landon off of your back - come on, Hope. _Everything_ was for you. You have to see it.” Josie pauses as the words sink in, but she doesn’t give Hope that long to ponder. 

“Penelope isn’t afraid of your past and your legacy. She certainly doesn’t want easy or simple or boring. And while Penelope and I worked for a while, there came a time when we didn’t. Relationships run their course but what you had with her, that wasn’t fake. At least not on her end. You must have seen the way she looked at you, Hope. It was like you were this puzzle that only she could put together.” 

Hope stays silent as Josie implores her to listen, to hear her words. “And we’re not getting back together, Hope, and I truly don’t think that whatever you thought your fake relationship was about, it wasn’t about us. It was always about you.”

“Have you seen the flowers?” she adds, pointing to the nightstand, and yes, Hope has, but that could mean anything. “She certainly hasn’t been bringing anyone else flowers. Not flowers that mean what I think those flowers mean.”

“How would you know what they mean?” 

“I dated her first, remember? She loved talking about flowers. She’s smooth, well, she thinks she’s smoother than she is. Penelope’s more of a show, not tell, kind of person. Her love language is gift giving or grand gestures, haven’t you noticed? She saved you from sacrificing yourself not letting you tumble into Malivore. She’s not stupid, Hope. She sees you for what and who you are, legacies be damned.” Josie smiles sadly, but it isn’t a smile that says that she’s in love with Penelope any longer. 

“Anyway, since you’re awake and could probably do with a shower and a maid service,” Josie’s eyes take in Hope’s room and the tribrid would throw a pillow at her if she wasn’t so damn weak, “I’m gonna go and tell Penelope you’re up. I know you both need to work out whatever - whatever all _this_ is, so, bye,” Josie rises, gesturing at Hope and the general state of her bedroom - clothes everywhere, dishes piled on her desk, her paintings all facing away from her, their fronts hidden. Hope would be offended if she hadn’t been a hermit for the past week, barely leaving her bed except to sneak away food and go to the bathroom. 

“Josie,” Hope calls as the siphon reaches the door. Josie spins on her heel, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome. Just talk to her, Hope. She’s actually a great listener when she wants to be.” Josie leaves and the door clicks shut behind her, leaving Hope alone with the mountain of information that Josie had unloaded on her. 

One thing sticks out to her though - something Josie had said almost off-handedly. Penelope was a sucker for grand romantic gestures and if Josie was right, and Hope is still gnawingly doubtful about that, but she also _really_ wants Josie to be right, then she should probably apologize to Penelope.

But first, she really needed to shower. And eat. And maybe paint.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s easy enough to find Penelope later that night. It’s almost like she wanted to be found. Perhaps maybe she had. She hadn’t been the one to hide away for a week, forgoing meals and sleep in an attempt to guard her heart from the inevitable break that she knew was coming. 

She wasn’t on the roof, however, which had been Hope’s first stop after showering and throwing on a halfway decent outfit. But the lights were on at the Old Mill and Hope could barely, just barely, make out the smell of Penelope’s weed wafting from the forest. Thank god for wolf senses. 

She couldn’t get there fast enough, sprinting to the Old Mill but pausing ten feet away to fix any stray flyaways, calm her aching lungs and her hammering heart. Penelope must have some sort of a death wish because she’s up on the third floor of the mill, where the loft is, her feet dangling over the edge as she sits on the thinnest piece of wood. (Hope wonders if maybe her death wish is actually wanting to be with Hope and everything that comes with that.) 

Hope takes the stairs to the second level and glances up, pausing before the ladder to the third level. 

“You should be resting,” Penelope’s voice drifts down to her and Hope can hear the exhaustion in the words. 

“So should you, but in a  _ shocking _ turn of events, I decided to completely disregard everything everyone said.” Well, not entirely everything. Josie’s words are an echo in her mind. 

“Idiot,” Penelope mumbles under her breath. Hope climbs the ladder slowly, approaching Penelope from behind as she sits next to her. She keeps a space between them even as she wants to close it. Penelope’s perfume, mixed with the weed, was already doing things to her fragile sense of self-control. It was like her body just had to be closer to Penelope, the ache growing stronger. Had it really been a week since she had been this close to her? 

A discarded wine bottle sits next to Penelope, along with an open pack of cigarettes and a champagne bottle. Josie said she was getting sleep, but this definitely didn’t look like rest. It looked like a party for one. She’s gorgeous, even now though, Hope notices. She always has been. Cloaked in a halo of sadness and resignation, she lights a cigarette without once meeting Hope’s eyes. 

“Penelope, I—” Hope begins but the way Penelope’s jaw clenches, Hope’s voice falls silent. Seconds pass before Hope clears her throat, tries again. 

“What I said at the party, I was just so — and then you were so — and Josie has always been —” Hope stops, pinching her nose with her hand. “I guess, what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry for accusing you of using me to get to Josie.” She reaches out for Penelope’s hand, and when the other witch pulls away, she feels the sting in her chest. 

“Is that all?” Penelope waits a beat as Hope watches her, unsure of what else to say. 

“You can’t just say that and expect that everything will magically be okay, Hope. You jumped to this absolutely wild conclusion without even talking to me about it.” Penelope’s eyes are sparkling in the dim light from the fairy lights, but she still won’t meet Hope’s gaze. Hope watches the cigarette in her hand smolder instead, the line of smoke swirling in the light breeze from the trees. 

“I know. I know I did.” Hope looks down at her feet because this apology was going from bad to worse and Penelope not looking at her was somehow terrible. She remembered waking up the night previous, and the way Penelope had looked at her — like she would break, could break — under Hope’s touch was almost too much to bear. 

Hope’s never seen her like this, her edges blurred and softened, even as she sits, her arms and legs crossed in black leather. Her hair is down and her face is free of makeup and she looks  _ vulnerable  _ in a way Hope has never thought of her before. Silently, she wonders how she could spend weeks thinking that Penelope didn’t really care, because now, it seems absolutely obvious. 

“And then you ran. You hid yourself away and hoped that it would get better or just go away and things don’t work like that, Hope.” 

“I didn’t realize—” Hope attempts, before she inhales deeply. “I didn’t realize how I felt about you, or why I was acting the way I was. Or that there was any chance you might feel the same. Never in a million years did I think that you — and me —”

For just a second, Penelope’s gaze seems to soften at Hope’s messy confession. It’s gone in a flash though, replaced with something harsher. 

“Was it really too much of a stretch?” she says almost to herself. Shaking her head, her voice gains an edge, “What are you saying, Hope?” 

“I want to try this, for real. No fake dating.”

Penelope gnaws on the inside of her lip, stubbing the butt of the cigarette out on the wood next to her. Hope prays she wouldn’t start a fire because the last thing she needed was arson added to her already long list of sins, but that wasn’t important right now. Penelope was. 

“Is this really what you want, this time?” Penelope asks her. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Hope replies, but she can already feel that it’s not enough. Penelope deserved so much more than that. Penelope deserved more than anything Hope could give her. 

“You know, you’ve never been a coward, Hope. I don’t want to be with a coward. Sacrificing yourself is more than just your body, Hope. Sometimes you have to be willing to be vulnerable for someone else. So prove it. Prove that this is what you want. Because w hen I date someone, Mikaelson, I like people to know it. I  _ want _ people to know that I’m yours. And I need to know that you mean it.”

“But, Penelope, I lo—”

“Don’t you dare, Hope Mikaelson. Don’t say anything if you don’t mean it.” Penelope turns to look at her then, her eyes shining with the unshed tears and Hope knows how hard Penelope is fighting to keep herself together. The anger and hurt rolls off of her in waves but Hope wished, just for a moment, that Penelope would give, just an inch. Instead,  her gaze wanders back to the grounds, and Hope knows when she’s been dismissed, carefully, silently, getting to her feet. 

Hope contemplates. She maps, and she plans, and she considers. She has definitely screwed this up horribly, and she hates that she hurt Penelope, hates how breakable and scared the other witch had seemed. She needs Penelope to  _ know _ , to be absolutely certain that Hope cares. Because she does. She really does. 

She also definitely needs help. 

Lizzie greets her with a raised eyebrow when she knocks. “Fake dating? You’re really cementing your reputation as the tragedy-riddled heroine with an epically cliché romantic side plot, Mikaelson.”

“Hello to you too, Lizzie.”

“Sorry,” Josie mouths from her bed and Hope just shrugs. Keeping anything a secret from Lizzie would have been impossible anyway. She was almost as well connected as Penelope, weaving her webs all over the school. 

“I need help,” she begins and Lizzie pulls her into the room without another word. 

The twins are on board, Lizzie with unparalleled enthusiasm because Josie was finally free of the she-devil and she was clearly Mikaelson’s problem now, and the plan slowly, painstakingly. starts taking shape. (Jade is evening Lizzie out, Hope thinks, as they strategize, but Hope’s definitely not going to be the one to point that out lest she gets a pillow to the face.)

As with all epic displays of love and affection in high school, it involves a party. Besides, she knows that Penelope appreciates a good party. It’s easy enough for Josie and Lizzie to get the factions on board and once M.G. has the vampires and Jed rallies the werewolves, the details slip into place with a speed that Hope never knew possible. She still doesn’t get all of the allure of a party in the middle of the woods, but with Josie and Lizzie at the helm, the Old Mill was transformed. A bonfire burned off to the side and the twins must have been researching design spells because fairy lights sparkled all over, like a canopy of stars. 

Hope had spent most the last day hiding out in the kitchen, only answering the shotgun-fast questions Lizzie and Josie had fired at her when absolutely necessary, barring entry to everyone (even Pedro, who sulked before Hope slipped him a cupcake) but she had to admit, the result is phenomenal. 

Hands wringing in front of her, Hope scans the crowd, eyes dancing between couples taking shots, the vamps playing beer pong, and the witches off to one side smoking what she knew were joints with Penelope’s special blend of weed. They blew O’s after each hit, and the smell of vanilla and cinnamon wafts over Hope. Penelope had changed up the formula, it seemed. Hope had never asked her about it — the chemistry involved or how she picked her flavors. She hadn’t asked her about a lot of things. But none of that mattered now because Penelope was nowhere to be found. 

Which  _ stings.  _

“She’s not going to show up,” she sighs, staring into the distance, towards the school as more students filtered into the clearing. 

“Yes, she will,” Lizzie promises her. “We’ll just tell her you’re not here. That shouldn’t be too hard of a sell. I can’t even believe you’re voluntarily at a party.”

“The things we do for love, or whatever,” Hope remarks dryly and Lizzie beams. 

“So it’s love now? Not just the need to flaunt the fact that you’re getting regular orgasms in the broom closets? You might want to rethink all of your not-so-secret fuck spots.” The blush that accompanied Lizzie’s statement told Hope more than she needed to know about where Lizzie was spending some of her alone time with Jade, but that was a subject she never wanted to broach with the blonde siphon. 

“I take it all back. I regret asking you for any help.” 

“She’ll be here,” Josie says, placing a comforting hand on Hope’s arm. 

She grins, despite the nerves in her stomach, before walking back towards the school. Because they couldn’t get Penelope here if Hope was already there. No, she had to make an entrance. 

Hope absolutely does not spend the next ten minutes pacing frantically. 

A text from Lizzie lights up her screen and it's just a devil emoji. Hope should be mad and try to defend Penelope’s honor with some expletives and promises of bodily harm as a reply, but her nerves are making her feel as if she’d taken ten shots in quick succession and she doesn’t even bother with a reply. 

Lizzie and Penelope step into the clearing and Josie raises her hand, rattling off an array of spells. It’s exactly what they had planned, the light dimming and a thousand candles lighting up in its place. It looks nice, Hope thinks, as far as she can tell, and breathes in deeply. Her hands are shaking. 

The music lowers and Hope walks out of the shadows — Josie absolutely didn’t nudge her — levitating a stereo above her head. Penelope had made an offhand comment once about a love for 80s romcoms and this was so absolutely iconic that Hope couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She approaches Penelope slowly, “In Your Eyes” serenading every step she takes and maybe she should have worn an acid—washed denim jacket to complete the look, but there wasn’t any turning back from this. Her heart threatens to explode, stuttering in her chest. 

Penelope watches her approach and the  anger and hurt that had flashed in her eyes at the Mill is gone. It seems to have been swallowed away by something else. She looks scared, terrified even, but makes no movements to leave, her chest rising and falling in the same lace camisole from their date that Hope wishes she could run her fingers over. Her damn collarbones were calling to Hope, so striking in the light of the candles. But it’s Penelope’s eyes that she notices. They’re fucking sparkling, shining from the firelight and Hope is breathless, her voice stripped away because the pain in her chest has been reducing to a simple longing for the girl in front of her. 

Hope bites her bottom lip to keep concentration on Penelope’s eyes when all she wants to do is glance down because Penelope is in a skirt that is absolutely sinful and damnit, feelings were hard but the way her body reacts to Penelope’s was enough to take her breath away. She craves for her, she aches for her, she wants her. Hope’s vision swimming as she thinks of brown curls, and legs for days underneath that stupid, tiny skirt. 

“Hope—,” Penelope whispers and Hope dares to glance down at Penelope’s lips and then back up. Stupid girl and this stupid height difference. Penelope’s smile is enough to make her heart dance in her chest and Hope knows that she has to break this eye contact, this hold Penelope has on her, and actually say something more than just stare at her. 

Here goes nothing. 

“I like you,” she says, and her voice sounds so much calmer than she feels. “A lot. And I don’t know at what point duing this stupid plan that I started falling for you, but I absolutely have.” Penelope is smiling, and Hope dares to step closer to her. 

“And I totally have this thing where I push away the people that I care about the most because I’m damaged goods and everyone around me seems to end up dead and I absolutely cannot let that happen to you,” Hope pauses, biting her lip and glancing down before back up at Penelope, taking a deep breath. 

“But I can’t be without you either. Because you anchor me and make the whole world quiet and I’m so not sure what I do for you, but I hope I make you happy. So, if you want to, I’d really,  _ really _ like to date you. For real this time,” she adds with a laugh. 

She shifts when Penelope just watches her, and god, every inch of her body feels alight with sparks, but then Penelope steps closer, answering her by bringing their lips together. The kiss is different from every single one they’ve shared before, and there’s something magical about how just the touch of Penelope’s lips can make her feel on fire as the witch pulls her in by the back of her neck. 

She gasps into the kiss and throws her arms around Penelope’s neck, resisting the urge to dip Penelope because she wasn’t sure she was  _ that _ smooth, but her legs were threatening to give out from sheer excitement and relief. Hope surrenders to the kiss, surrenders to it all and the world seems to slow around them as they kiss, soft and playful and then deep as Hope opens her mouth and Penelope licks into it. Hope pulls away slightly to bite and tug Penelope’s lower lip and she feels nails digging into her hips at the motion, a growl nearly escaping Penelope’s throat. 

The boombox crashes to the ground, and Hope really should have let someone else levitate it, and Penelope smiles against her lips. The vice around Hope’s heart loosens and she can finally breathe easier for the first time in days. 

“Is that a yes or did you just want to make out in public?” Hope asks. 

“What am I going to do with you?” Penelope asks in mock outrage, “that’s a yes.”

“We have a yes. Now, please go get a room and get out of the way of my dance floor!” Lizzie announces to resounding cheers from the students. Hope turns her head, her forehead against Penelope’s cheek. 

“Go away, Lizzie,” Hope begs, but she’s grinning. Penelope is silent, hands still at Hope’s hips and Hope can feel her eyes on her, testing her to see if she would break the embrace and run and hide. Hope wasn’t going anywhere. 

“This is how you thank me,” Lizzie shakes her head, but disappears back into the crowd, turning the music up with a flick of her wrist. 

“The next time you plan a party, please ask me and not her,” Penelope mutters, but she’s definitely smiling as her fingers trail lines up and down Hope’s back underneath her jacket. 

“It’s not like I could have asked you,” Hope replies and she glances around the clearing. 

“I would have settled for flowers, you know. You didn’t need to get a boombox and assemble the whole school.”

“I didn’t want you to settle.”

Penelope smiles, and the trepidation that had been on her face earlier is no longer visible. Hope pulls her closer, because she can, finally, because she wants to, because she’s wanted to for so, so long, and kisses her again. 

She could have told Penelope then and there that she had lied earlier — that she knew exactly when it had changed for her. It was after the incident on the stairs with Landon when Penelope had so thoroughly claimed her as her own, when they had looked into each other’s eyes during the most intimate moment that Hope had ever shared with someone else. It was then, completely armorless and vulnerable that she knew whatever defenses she had, whatever armor she had put on, whatever walls she had built, Penelope had dismantled everything. 

“Come on,” Hope says, when they break apart, “I’m pretty sure dancing is a part of this whole party thing.”

“You dance?” Penelope teases her. 

“I am a Mikaelson, you know,” Hope replies, haughtily, and Penelope spins her out and back in, lightning-fast. “Dancing is kind of in the DNA.” 

“Well then, Mikaelson, let’s dance.” Hope’s world feels right again, like it’s realigned itself on the right axis again, at last, and she could smile forever. She’s missed Penelope, more than she can explain. 

So they dance, for what feels like hours, stealing sips of each other’s drinks, the haze of everyone around them coating them both in a pleasant buzz. It’s like the first party, when Penelope’s hand was constantly at her back and her lips were at Hope’s ear. This time, however, it's Hope who’s whispering in Penelope’s ear, telling her exactly what she would like to do to her in that teeny, tiny skirt that she has on.

They slip away at some point, disappearing into the darkness and no one seems to notice. Hope almost prefers it that way. She had never intended any relationship that she had, real or fake, to be ostentatious or attention-grabbing. Savior or not, she enjoyed being left alone. Penelope brings their clasped hands to her lips, spinning Hope again and the lightness that she always felt in Penelope’s presence is back as her arm threads around Penelope’s waist. 

“I have something else for you. It’s not quite as scandalous as those things I was saying to you earlier, but —” Hope trails off as they approach her door and Penelope pushes her up against it, her mouth at the back of Hope’s neck after she moves her hair out of the way and off to one side. Hope can feel the heat from Penelope’s core against her ass and she backs up into Penelope, a moan escaping her lips. 

“Patience,” Hope breathes, echoing Penelope’s words when they had been in the library and Hope had been seconds away from shredding Penelope’s favorite blouse and cashmere sweater.

“You’ve been saying those  _ things _ all night and now you expect me to have patience when we’re finally alone?” Penelope groans into Hope’s neck, her kisses turned open-mouthed as her hands move under the material of Hope’s shirt, ghosting over her back and moving around the front. She plays with the button on Hope’s jeans and Hope feels a rush through her body at the feather-light touches. 

“The surprise is worth it,” Hope replies simply, her voice breaking slightly at the end and Penelope mutters a curse but takes a step back. Hope breathes a bit easier — her head had been spinning from Penelope’s ministrations and she was seconds away from giving in to the feeling, letting Penelope take her in the hallway — but with a turn of the doorknob, she hoped to take the words right out Penelope’s mouth. 

Hope’s room is awash in light, warm light from nearly a thousand candles bathe the room in a soft, gentle glow. Her desk’s free of papers and books, the leather tomes all safely in the massive bookshelf. She had taken Josie’s advice and done a deep clean after her weeklong hibernation. Cupcakes, cakes, croquembouches and all manner of desserts are piled on the desk instead, because while Hope had been holed up in her room watching Cutthroat Kitchen, there may have been a day or so where she had binged the entirety of the Great British Baking Show and baking for Penelope had been a release, an escape, a way to quiet her nerves and drown out the noise. 

She’s got countless easels arranged on the far end of her room, illuminated by the dim light of the candles scattered everywhere. On every easel and even on the ground and standing up against the walls, Penelope sees herself. Her eyes, her lips, her face. She sees all the ways Hope had drawn her, holding court on the steps, smoking on the roof, focused in class, naked in Hope’s bed, laughing at a joke she doesn’t remember. 

“What is this?” Penelope’s heart is racing, her head is swimming. She had seen a few of these weeks before but didn’t realize how many there were. How Hope actually  _ saw _ her, over and over again. 

Hope focuses on Penelope as she trails a hand over one of the paintings. There were dozens. “Proving that I’m yours, you’re mine, all of that, to everybody else is — well, I think everybody is very aware now. But I wanted you to know, too. For sure. That I’m all in.”

She takes Penelope’s hand, leading her towards the paintings, stopping at the first of them. Penelope looking out the car window, a coffee in her hand, the window open, her hair windswept. “You’re the reason I didn’t jump,” she begins, “and, more importantly, you reminded me that staying alive can be just as important for the people I love as protecting them.”

Penelope inhales next to her and Hope leads her past several sketches she’d done in class to a painting of Penelope on the roof, cut off just below her shoulders. “You almost made me have a heart attack with your tanning outfit,” she remembers. 

Painting after painting, of so many moments they’ve spent together. The last one Hope stops in front of is a bouquet of flowers. Roses, tiger lilies, daffodils….

“I thought I would steal from you,” she whispers. “You don’t have a monopoly on symbolism.”

“No,” Penelope replies, standing behind Hope with her arms again around her stomach, leaning her head on her shoulder. “Is this really how you see me?” 

Hope spins in her arms, a hand tucking a lock of hair behind Penelope’s ear and the witch leans into Hope’s hand, thumb cascading over Penelope’s cheek. “You know these paintings don’t do you justice.” Hope smiles with an eye roll. “But yes, small moments that burned themselves in my brain. All because of you.” 

Penelope grins, leaning down to steal a kiss. Hope deepens it as Penelope grips at her waist and every nerve-ending is sending sensations straight to her core and Penelope is the first to pull away. 

“What are the cakes for, then?”

Hope shakes her head. “Cake never needs a reason to exist. Do you want to eat the cakes or me?”

“And here I thought we were being patient, Mikaelson.” Penelope smiles and it’s genuine, the way her eyes crinkle at the edges. “Why can’t I have both?” She nips at Hope’s lips and Hope laughs into the kiss. It’s unlike any of the kisses they’ve shared before, filled with frenzy and urgency but an undercurrent of emotions behind it that Hope wants to keep and hold and cherish forever. Penelope kisses her back just as desperately, a silent promise on her lips of _ I’m yours _ . She tangles her hands in Hope’s hair, an effort to further decrease any distance between them and pull Hope into her. 

Hope’s hands slide down to her ass, grasping the undersides of them, lifting her up, and fuck, that’s hot. She wraps her legs around Hope’s waist, lets out an embarrassingly loud moan that has Hope smirking against her lips. She bites down lightly on Hope’s lip in revenge, and is rewarded with Hope groaning her name. 

Penelope swears she hears Hope let out a growl as she falls onto the bed, head landing on pillows as her back hits the mattress, Hope pinning her hands on either side of her head. But Penelope reverses their positions just as easily and Hope can’t say she’s upset, because the way Penelope is looking at her is leaving her absolutely  _ wanting.  _ And honestly, it’s criminal for Penelope to look at her like that. Because it makes her insides burn and Hope wonders if this is how Penelope has always looked at her — like she’s her entire heart, her entire world. 

She slides her fingers under the thin lace of Penelope’s camisole, pulling it up and over Penelope’s head and sliding her bra down her arms and off. 

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers and Penelope’s breath catches. Hope’s has said this before, thousands of times already, but this time it feels a little different. It’s with the knowledge that she  _ wants _ Penelope, Penelope wants her back, and this is all so scary and new but it feels like coming home. 

And fuck, Hope’s missed this. Missed Penelope’s hands on her body, making quick work of Hope’s clothes, missed the breathless gasps that slip out from Penelope’s lips as Hope’s hands thumb over her breasts, missed Penelope’s lips against hers. Penelope’s clothes disappear in a flash too and she isn’t sure if they stumbled their way through that or if she magicked them off of her. Either way, she doesn’t care as Penelope straddles her, bringing their mouths together in a kiss that  becomes heated quickly. It’s all teeth and tongue and heavy breathing as she starts moving against Hope, her center grinding dangerously close to Hope’s. 

“Fuck,” Hope hisses at the contact, laying down as Penelope’s tongue moving down the sloping planes of Hope’s over her chest, licking and sucking at her nipples. 

“That’s the idea,” Penelope says, her voice hovering on the edge of hoarse and Hope can’t even begin to ponder what the voice is doing to her because Penelope is taking her damn time and it's fantastic and frustrating. 

Penelope’s tongue circles at the sensitive buds of her nipples, her hands and thumbs ghosting over Hope’s soft skin. She hears the hitch of Hope’s breathing when her lips trap one of Hope’s nipples, her tongue swirling around. She bites it gently, pulling with her teeth and Hope arches on the sheets, Penelope’s other hand palming the opposite breast, circling the nub with her fingers. Penelope’s knees are on either side of her and Hope can smell her arousal, can smell the hint of vanilla and plumeria that always trails after Penelope. Hope’s eyes are shut as she breathes up to the ceiling and Penelope may not be an artist but she can’t help but watch as Hope writhes underneath her while she licks and sucks at her breasts. She’s absolutely resplendent. 

“Penelope—,”Hope says, and it's the way her voice cracks and breaks that makes Penelope want to take and take and take from Hope, because Hope’s voice is asking for something more and it's needy and desperate and so filled with want. She grinds down on Hope’s thigh with her center, Hope’s hands scratching up and down her back as she moves up from Hope’s breasts to her mouth. They kiss again and Hope moans into her mouth and Penelope can almost feel the way the kiss makes her heart race, makes her wetter. 

Kissing Hope Mikaelson will never get old. It’s exhilarating and all-consuming, Hope’s body under hers, hands sliding down her back and Hope’s breasts, full and supple, pressing against her chest. She rolls her hips slowly and Hope gasps into her mouth, her moans brimming with urgency.

She grinds on Hope, slowly agonizingly slowly, completely aware and extremely sensitive to the sensation of Hope’s breasts and nipples against her own, their bodies already slick with sweat and she hasn’t even  _ touched _ Hope yet but Hope writhes into her, her movements begging for friction, for something else. 

“Penelope—,” she pleads again and Penelope feels dizzy at the low timbre of Hope’s tone.

“What do you want?” Penelope’s breathless as well and Hope finally understands that this is what it feels like to be worshipped. Penelope is everywhere, overwhelming her senses with touch and taste and her skin feels like it's on fire in the best way possible. 

“I need you inside of me,” Hope gasps out, her lips trailing over Penelope’s neck. “Can you feel how wet you make me?” 

“God,” Penelope says, exhaling roughly against Hope’s mouth, trailing a hand downwards to her chest, abdomen, then to her inner thighs slowly.

“Fuck—Pen,” Hope whispers hoarsely, her hips lifting up slightly as if she could will Penelope’s fingers inside of her faster. 

Penelope is determined to make her crazy, drive her to the edge as she skims her fingers through Hope’s center languidly, her touches and strokes coming fleeting and barely there and setting Hope aflame. Penelope can’t help but watch the way Hope clutches at her tighter, her fingernails digging into her hips and then her ass to pull her closer. 

“Penelope—,” Hope says it almost like a warning because a devious mile is spreading over Penelope’s face as they look at each other through heavy-lidded eyes. Hope’s not above begging and Penelope knows that she is dangerously close to doing just that. Penelope kisses her then, running her fingers down Hope’s center and then back up, long lines through Hope’s slick heat. Her fingers finally, finally find Hope’s clit, moving in large circles at an antagonizing pace. 

Hope arches into her touch, her nails scratching over Penelope’s skin, and fuck, this feels amazing, mind-blowing, Hope open and wet underneath her touch as Penelope’s fingers slide over her clit. Hope hisses her name and Penelope kisses her jaw, biting at her pulse point. “Talk to me,” she requests into Hope’s neck, “I want to hear you.” She needs to - needs to know that Hope is here with her, that every second of this amazing night is real. 

“Fuck,” Hope sighs against her skin, her fingers pressing against Penelope’s back and she may not be able to show off marks on her own skin but she can definitely leave her mark on Penelope, “you feel so good. I love how you touch me.” 

Penelope doesn’t think she will get tired of this, the way she grows wetter and feels desire pool low in her stomach as she feels just how wet Hope is beneath her, nearly dripping onto her bed. Hope kisses Penelope’s cheek as the witch continues biting Hope’s neck, nosing at her cheek and pressing open-mouthed kisses along her skin. The only sounds in the room are Hope’s ragged moans and the slide of Penelope’s fingers against her.

“More. Fuck — you know I need more,” Hope finally concedes, the whimpers and moans she is eliciting against Penelope’s ear enough to send tremors through Penelope’s body, even as she circles her clit, bringing Hope closer and closer to the edge. 

“Is that so?” Penelope smirks, hovering over Hope with one arm by her head, watching her with pupils blown before she captures Hope’s lips in yet another moan-filled kiss. Hope pulls her down closer, which makes Penelope lean into her more as she presses down, rubbing with added pressure on her clit. Penelope smirks into the kiss because she is absolutely smitten with this gorgeous girl under her, even as she moans and moans.

“Yes,” Hope replies, “god yes. So, if you don’t fuck me soon, I’ll do it myself,” she challenges, trying to make herself sound stern even as she approaches orgasm. Penelope raises an eyebrow because Hope getting herself off underneath her was a sight that she would love to behold, but she  _ needs _ to be the one to make her come undone. 

“Bossy,” Penelope says sarcastically, plunging two fingers into Hope without any more preamble because Hope was dripping, absolutely soaked underneath her and Penelope moans along with Hope at the sensation. Being inside of Hope is hot and wet and slick and she shouldn’t be this worked up because Hope has barely even touched her, but Hope like this, wanton and wanting, is  absolutely breathtaking. Penelope takes in the curve of her back, the heave of her breasts, her head tipped back against the pillows and she wants and she wants and she wants. 

“I’ve been thinking about you all night,” Hope breathes out, wrapping a leg around Penelope’s waist, pulling her closer. “You looked so beautiful.” Penelope curls her fingers and Hope’s hips snap upwards, her head thrown back, exposing the long line of her neck. Hope leans up to kiss her. “Actually,” she whispers, “you’re all I’ve been thinking about for weeks.” Penelope keeps moving her fingers, faster and faster, but her eyes are on Hope’s lips. And she wants her to hear every word of this as she brings their foreheads together. “I should have figured — fuck, you feel so good inside of me — it out earlier.” Hope’s voice leaves her lips in a rush as she moans into the feeling. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Penelope confesses, spreading kisses over Hope’s neck, collarbone and chest, tinted pink with pleasure. 

“More,” Hope gasps out, and Penelope adds a third finger, stretching Hope open wide. Hope lets out another moan, her breath rapid and shallow and she is so fucking close. Hope clenches around Penelope’s fingers, nearly forcing them out but she plunges them in deeply and out quickly. Hope comes all around her and she doesn’t slow down, merely stifles Hope’s moans in her mouth with a kiss, licking into her mouth. 

Pulling her fingers out and circling Hope’s clit, she elicits a second orgasm with a few strokes and Hope breaks in her arms, her back arching off of the bed, sweat slicking her chest as Penelope kisses her soundly, collapsing next to her, the ache in her core nearly unbearable. 

Hope, for her part, looks thoroughly fucked, eyes closed as her breathing returns to normal. She recovers faster than Penelope expects, tribrid stamina probably, and it doesn’t take long for her to straddle Penelope, grabbing the witch’s hands and slamming them into the bed above Penelope’s head. The smirk that is on Penelope’s lips is wiped away as Hope runs her nails down Penelope’s arms, cupping and grabbing at her neck as her lips kiss a line from Penelope’s ear, down her jaw and along her throat. 

“What do you want?” Hope asks her, sucking a mark into the skin just above Penelope’s collarbone. “My mouth? My fingers? Both?”

“Oh fuck. Um, both?” Penelope says, and it comes out in a question that makes Hope laugh into Penelope’s neck. 

Hope doesn’t move though, content to drag kisses along the line of Penelope’s jaw, biting into her pulse point. Finally, after what felt like minutes, hours of Hope kissing, licking, and biting at Penelope’s jaw, no doubt leaving marks that she was going to have to cover the next morning, she moves down Penelope’s body at a glacial pace. She traces her lips from Penelope’s neck, across her collarbones , chest, and then to her thighs. Penelope wants to grind into Hope’s face and ride her until the sun comes up, but Hope pushes her down with her hands, pressing her into the sheets as she bites at Penelope’s hip bone. 

“Any day now,” Penelope breathes out, biting into her lip and regretting her words the next second because the noise that is threatening to escape her mouth is more whimper than moan as the flat of Hope’s tongue swirls around her clit. “Oh, fuck, babe, yes.” 

Penelope tugs at the back of Hope’s head, fingers scratching through her hair to pull her closer because Hope’s tongue is warm and magnificent and absolutely  _ everywhere _ . Hope wastes no time, pushing two fingers into Penelope, who exhales loudly and swears to the ceiling. She knows she’s soaking wet, felt it dripping down her thighs as she ground on Hope’s leg, but Hope’s fingers slip in and out of her easily, far too easily, the sound of their lovemaking and her moans punctuating the air. Hope moves her fingers deeply, thrusting harder and faster as she curls them. 

Penelope would be embarrassed with how quickly she comes into Hope’s mouth because she’d known she was close but she didn’t realize that she was that close. A glance down at Hope sends her over the edge because Hope is watching her — her lips and tongue moving around her clit, her eyes dark and half-opened, pupils blown as they lock their gazes to each other. Penelope keeps her eyes on Hope as she comes. Hope’s grip on her hip with her free hand is warm and she licks circles, swirling her tongue, sending Penelope tumbling over the edge with a cry on her lips.

“Fuck, I love you,” she breathes, as Hope pulls her fingers out. She kneels on the bed between Penelope’s legs, licking Penelope off of her fingers and the witch sits up, chest heaving and watches her, leaning up on her elbows as she tugs Hope towards her. 

“I mean —,” she tries to backpedal but Hope shakes her head quickly, dropping on top of Penelope again, her hands on either side of her face, their chests pressed together. 

“Don’t you dare take that back, Penelope Park,” Hope remarks, letting the words wash over her as a smile threatens to break out across her face. 

“Or what, Mikaelson?” Penelope throws her arms around Hope’s shoulders, wrapping her legs around her waist. 

“You’ve got a lot of confidence for someone who couldn’t answer a simple question a few moments ago,” Hope tosses back to Penelope, kissing the tip of her nose and the emotions rising up in her chest make Hope’s heart stutter but its intimate and tender and intoxicating and comforting and Hope sinks into the feeling as she moves to Penelope’s side. “I love you, too.”

She traces her hands over Penelope’s cheek as the witch closes her eyes, content to exist with Hope in the warm afterglow. She cracks open her eyes seconds later and Hope can’t help but laugh because Penelope nearly jerks upwards. 

“Are you going to feed me cake now?” she winks and Hope buries her head into the pillow, groaning. 

“You’re insufferable,” Hope says, shaking her head, her words muffled by the pillow. 

“Yeah, but I’m yours,” comes the reply and Hope lifts her head, a stupid smile on her lips that Penelope wants to kiss off. 

“Say that again,” she demands. 

“I’m yours, Hope,” Penelope replies and it should scare her because she’s afraid that Penelope will regret this, that she will one day inevitably leave, that who Hope will get too messy, but for once, it doesn’t. 

It’s not the happily ever she imagined, months ago, but it might be better, Hope thinks, as Penelope shoves a cupcake in her mouth, kissing the icing off of her lips with such care and love (and a little bit of passion because god, Penelope was great with her tongue) that Hope thinks her heart might actually burst with happiness from it all. 

**Author's Note:**

> we love hearing your thoughts, so leave us a comment, pretty please?


End file.
